Top 100 Zusak Quotes: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Zusak

#1. My friend Markus Zusak wrote a story from the point of view of death, 'The Book Thief.' I thought that's a great idea, where your omniscient narrator is death. I'm glad he had that idea because I wouldn't have been able to work so well with it.

Shaun Tan

#2. I collect my thoughts as if they will stain me, murder me, and then resurrect me.
Markus Zusak, When Dogs Cry

Markus Zusak

#3. Can a person steal happiness? Or is just another internal, infernal human trick?

Markus Zusak

#4. First the colours.
Then the humans.
That's usually how I see things.
Or at least, how I try.

Markus Zusak

#5. Having conquered not only the work at hand, but the

Markus Zusak

#6. You should give it to Max, Liesel. See if you can leave it on the bedside table, like all the other things." Liesel watched him as if he'd gone insane. "How, though?" Lightly, he tapped her skull with his knuckles. "Memorize it. Then write it down for him.

Markus Zusak

#7. I did it because you are the epitome of ordinariness.

Markus Zusak

#8. Yes, I'm often reminded of her, and in one of my array of pockets, I have kept her story to retell. It is one of the small legion I carry, each one extraordinary in its own right. Each one an attempt - an immense leap of an attempt - to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it.

Markus Zusak

#9. The only think worse than a boy who hates you; a boy who loves you.

Markus Zusak

#10. Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.

Markus Zusak

#11. The thrill of being ignored!

Markus Zusak

#12. I like the idea that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing - that words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around.

Markus Zusak

#13. It's lucky I was there. Then again, who am I kidding? I'm in most places at least once, and in 1943, I was just about everywhere.

Markus Zusak

#14. Oh, come on, Arthur." "I don't want to hear it, Andy." "Jesus Christ" "He doesn't want to hear it, either.

Markus Zusak

#15. She was a Jew feeder without a question in the world on that man's first night in Molching. She was an arm reacher, deep into a mattress, to deliver a sketchbook to a teenage girl. (84.25)

Markus Zusak

#16. In a way, it was destiny.

Markus Zusak

#17. Sometimes she would whisper the word Mama and see her mother's face a hundred times in a single afternoon.

Markus Zusak

#18. We don't need a point, son. We're juvenile, we're dirty, we don't have girls, we have noses full of snot, throats sore as hell, we've got scabs on us, we suffer bouts of acne, we've got no girls ... What more reasons do we need?

Markus Zusak

#19. A woman of wire had laid herself down, her scream traveling the street, till it fell sideways like a rolling coin starved of momentum.

Markus Zusak

#20. She even touches Jimmy's face on the photos, and I see what it is to love someone like Milla loved that man. Her fingertips are made of love.

Markus Zusak

#21. There must be aplace in heaven for those who have been where I have been.

Markus Zusak

#22. In a way, I wish I could be like that. You'd never worry or care about anything that really mattered. You'd be happy, in the same pitiful way someone like our friend Ritchie is. Nothing affects you, and you affect nothing.

Markus Zusak

#23. A single word leaned against the girl.

Markus Zusak

#24. How many people get this chance?
And of those few, how many actually take it?

Markus Zusak

#25. It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it has pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice.
As you may expect, someone has died.

Markus Zusak

#26. Steve, on the other hand, has plenty of friends, but he wouldn't bleed for any of them, because he wouldn't trust them to bleed for him. In that way he's just as alone as me.

Markus Zusak

#27. My heart applauds inside my ears, first like a roaring crowd, then slows and slows until it's a solitary person, clapping with unbridled sarcasm.
Clap. Clap.
Clap.
Well done, Ed.
Well given up.

Markus Zusak

#28. We smell the impact of traffic and humans. Humans and traffic. Back and forth. We taste our moment, swallowing it, knowing it. We feel our nerves twitching inside our stomaches, lunging at our skin from beneath.

Markus Zusak

#29. Within minutes, mounds of concrete and earth were stacked and piled. The streets were ruptured veins. Blood streamed till it was dried on the road, and the bodies were stuck there, like driftwood after the flood.

Markus Zusak

#30. For two days I went about my business. I travelled the globe as always, handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity.

Markus Zusak

#31. ... it was raining on Himmel Street when the world ended for Liesel Meminger.
The sky was dripping.
Like a tap that a child has tried its hardest to turn off but hasn't quite managed.

Markus Zusak

#32. Footsteps crease the grass behind us.

Markus Zusak

#33. The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.

Markus Zusak

#34. If you feel like it, come with me. I will tell you a story.

Markus Zusak

#35. One wild card was yet to be played.

Markus Zusak

#36. The city was dark except for the building lights that seemed to appear like sores - like bandaids had been ripped off to expose the city's skin.

Markus Zusak

#37. I'm afraid, of falling asleep again.

Markus Zusak

#38. You can't eat books, sweetheart.

Markus Zusak

#39. I feel the fear, but I walk fast toward it.

Markus Zusak

#40. Well, promise me one thing, Liesel. If I die anytime soon, you make sure they bury me right.

Markus Zusak

#41. We all have our duties here. We all suffer. We all endure our setbacks for the greater good of mankind.

Markus Zusak

#42. They fought like champions.
For a minute.
Just when it was getting interesting, both boys were hauled away their collars. A watchful parent.

Markus Zusak

#43. Behind me, a teddy bear was resting on the shoulder of a corpse. A lemon candle stood below the branches. The pilot's soul was in my arms.

Markus Zusak

#44. You see? Even death has a heart.

Markus Zusak

#45. She slept a lot and didn't dream, and on most occasions she was sorry to wake up. Everything disappeared when she was asleep.

Markus Zusak

#46. Now I've changed things. I've left my own fingerprints on the world, no matter how small, and it's upset the equilibrium of us

Markus Zusak

#47. But neither of us knows, because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it.

Markus Zusak

#48. I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it.

Markus Zusak

#49. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words. That's why she could climb higher than anyone else. She had desire. She was hungry for them.

Markus Zusak

#50. The journey continued like everything had happened.

Markus Zusak

#51. The spoken truth of Rudy Steiner
'I guess I'm better at leaving things behind than stealing them.

Markus Zusak

#52. You hide a Jew. You pay. Somehow or other, you must.

Markus Zusak

#53. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words so damning and brilliant.

Markus Zusak

#54. She closes the door completely, and I crouch there. I allow myself to fall forward and rest my head on the door frame. My breath bleeds. My heartbeat drowns my ears.

Markus Zusak

#55. I had many boxing matches with my brother in the backyard when we were younger, and I guess while other people abhor boxing for its brutality, I also have to admire anyone who climbs into the ring to face up to what could be the ultimate defeat.

Markus Zusak

#56. ... Pfiffikus, whose vulgarity made Rosa Hubermann look like a wordsmith and a saint.

Markus Zusak

#57. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair and surprise.

Markus Zusak

#58. A GUIDED TOUR OF SUFFERING: To your left, perhaps your right, perhaps even straight ahead, you find a small black room. In it sits a Jew. He is scum. He is starving. He is afraid. Please - try not to look away.

Markus Zusak

#59. Rosa Hubermann was sitting on the edge of the bed with her husband's accordion tied to her chest. Her fingers hovered above the keys. She did not move. She didn't ever appear to be breathing.

Markus Zusak

#60. When a person's last response was Saumensch or Saukerl or Arschloch, you knew you had them beaten.

Markus Zusak

#61. I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.

Markus Zusak

#62. you need life in your life.

Markus Zusak

#63. As a child in Sydney, my German Mum and my Austrian Dad would spontaneously tell me stories about what they saw and what they did as children. It was like a piece of Europe coming into our house ... Those stories led me to my writing.

Markus Zusak

#64. Liesel observed the strangeness of her foster father's eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver.

Markus Zusak

#65. How do you tell if someone is alive? You check for breathing.

Markus Zusak

#66. Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment.
'There were stars,' He said. 'They burned my eyes.'
... from a Himmel street window, he wrote, the stars set fire to my eyes.

Markus Zusak

#67. It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.

Markus Zusak

#68. None of them had it. They had no qualms about stealing, but they needed to be told. They liked to be told, and Viktor Chemmel liked to be the teller. It was a nice microcosm.

Markus Zusak

#69. I'm just another stupid human.

Markus Zusak

#70. The word maybe was beginning to annoy me, because the only thing that was fixed was that maybe would be with me forever.

Markus Zusak

#71. The day was gray, the color of Europe.

Markus Zusak

#72. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.

Markus Zusak

#73. Papa grinned and pointed at the girl. "Book, sandpaper, pencil," he ordered her, "and accordion!" once she was already gone. Soon, they were on Himmel Street, carrying the words, the music, the washing.

Markus Zusak

#74. There are pieces of me on the ground.

Markus Zusak

#75. In the darkness of my dark-beating heart, I know. He'd have loved it, all right.

Markus Zusak

#76. The only sign of war was a cloud of dust migrating from east to west. It looked through the windows, trying to find a way inside, and as it simultaneously thickened and spread, it turned the trail of humans into apparitions. There were no people on the street anymore. They were rumors carrying bags.

Markus Zusak

#77. A beautiful, tear-stomped girl,shaking the dead.

Markus Zusak

#78. Make no mistake, the woman had a heart. She had a bigger one that people would think. There was a lot in it, stored up, high in miles of hidden shelving. Remember that she was the woman with the instrument strapped to her body in the long, moon-slit night.

Markus Zusak

#79. I'm twenty years old and look at me
there isn't a thing I want to do

Markus Zusak

#80. The passengers slid out as if from a torn package.

Markus Zusak

#81. The song was born on her breathe and died at her lips.

Markus Zusak

#82. Just be patient, she told herself, and with the mounting pages, the strength of her writing fist grew.

Markus Zusak

#83. Life had altered in the wildest possible way, but it was imperative that they act as if nothing at all had happened.

Markus Zusak

#84. God damn, you were so beautiful, Mama.

Markus Zusak

#85. You can do anything when it's not real.
When it is real, nothing breaks your fall. Nothing gets between you and the ground.

Markus Zusak

#86. The juggling comes to an end now, but the struggling does not. I have Liesel Meminger in one hand, Max Vandenburg in the other. Soon I will clap them together. Just give me a few pages.

Markus Zusak

#87. One opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death.

Markus Zusak

#88. His eyes were cold and brown - like coffee stains ...

Markus Zusak

#89. But you'll come and get me if he wakes up, won't you? Just make something up. Scream out like I've done something wrong. Start swearing at me. Everyone will believe it, don't worry.

Markus Zusak

#90. I look at my first books and am glad they weren't published ... You start writing by imitating your heroes, then you keep the heart of that worship in your work. As time goes by, you get other influences and find your own voice.

Markus Zusak