The Book Thief Quotes

Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out, like the rain. (p. 85) ~ Markus Zusak

She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall - a quiet-smiled secret. No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through. The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.
She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.
Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.
The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.
They breathed.
German and Jewish lungs. ~ Markus Zusak

For at least twenty minutes she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words
their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. It he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again? ~ Markus Zusak

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

Summer came.
For the book thief, everything was going nicely.
For me, the sky was the color of Jews.
When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity's certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower. ~ Markus Zusak

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

An attribute of Rosa Hubermann, she was a good woman for a crisis. ~ Markus Zusak

He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world.
She was the book thief without the words.
Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain. ~ Markus Zusak

You hide a Jew. You pay. Somehow or other, you must. ~ Markus Zusak

You might well ask just what the hell he was thinking. The answer is, probably nothing at all.He'd probably say he was exercising his God-given right to stupidity. ~ Markus Zusak

On many counts, taking a boy like Rudy Steiner was robbery
so much life, so much to live for
yet somehow, I'm certain he would have loved to see the frightening rubble and the swelling of the sky on the night he passed away. He'd have cried and turned and smiled if only he could have seen the book thief on her hands and knees, next to his decimated body. He'd have been glad to witness her kissing his dusty, bomb-hit lips.
Yes, I know it.
In the darkness of my dark-beating heart, I know. He'd have loved it all right.
You see?
Even death has a heart. ~ Markus Zusak

I left drama school to do 'The Book Thief' - it was a real trip going straight from school kind of right into it, but I feel like the momentum of being in school put me in a good mindset as far as going into it as a learning experience. ~ Ben Schnetzer

Where Hans Hubermann and Erik Vandenburg were ultimately united by music, Max and Liesel were held together by the quiet gathering of words. ~ Markus Zusak

Don't make me happy. Please, don't fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this. Look at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see the graze inside me? Do you see it growing before your very eyes, eroding me? I don't want to hope for anything anymore. ~ Markus Zusak

Lastly, the Hubermanns. Hans. Papa. He was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. His soul sat up. It met me. Those kind of souls always do--the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, "I know who you are and I am ready. Not that i want to go, of course, but I will come." Those souls are always light becausre more of them have been put out............ Lisel. His soul whispered it as I carried him. ~ Marcus Zusak

She could have shot herself, scratched herself or indulged in other forms of self-mutilation, but she chose what she probably felt was the weakest option-to at least endure the discomfort of the weather. ~ Markus Zusak

The book thief lay in bed that night, and the boy only came before she closed her eyes. He was one member of a cast, for Liesel was always visited in that room. Her papa stood and called her half a woman. Max was writing The Word Shaker in the corner. Rudy was naked by the door. Occasionally her mother stood on a bedside train platform. And far away, in the room that stretched like a bridge to a nameless town, her brother, Werner, played in the cemetery snow. ~ Markus Zusak

When death captures me," the boy vowed, "he will feel my fist in his face." (31.26) ~ Markus Zusak

After another ten minutes, the gates of thievery would open just a crack, and Liesel Meminger would widen them a little further and squeeze through.
***TWO QUESTIONS***
Would the gates shut behind her?
Or would they have the goodwill to let her back out?
As Liesel would discover, a good thief requires many things.
Stealth. Nerve. Speed.
More important than any of those things, however, was one final requirement.
Luck.
Actually.
Forget the ten minutes.
The gates open now. ~ Markus Zusak

The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For those people, life was still achievable. ~ Markus Zusak

There's a multitude of stories (...) that I allow to distract me as I work, just as the colours do. I pick them up in the unluckiest, unlikliest places and I make sure to remember them as I go about my work. The Book Thief is one such story. ~ Markus Zusak

A statue of the book thief stood in the courtyard ... it's very rare, don't you think, for a statue to appear before it's subject has become famous? ~ Markus Zusak

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

She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Leisel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist's suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers ... She did not say goodbye. She was incapable, and after a few more minutes at his side, she was able to tear herself from the ground. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on ... ~ Markus Zusak

Clearly," said Arthur,"you're an idiot- but you're our kind of idiot. Come on. ~ Markus Zusak

And I can promise you something, because it was a thing I saw many years later - a vision in the book thief herself - that as she knelt next to Hans Hubermann, she watched him stand and play the accordion. He stood and strapped it on in the alps of broken houses and played the accordion with kindness silver eyes and even a cigarette slouched on his lips. The bellows breathed and the tall man played for Liesel Meminger one last time as the sky was slowly taken away from her. ~ Markus Zusak

There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking,and there are soft,coal-colored clouds, beating like black hearts ~ Markus Zusak

The book thief has struck for the first time – the beginning of an illustrious career. ~ Markus Zusak

She slid a book from the shelf and sat with it on the floor.
She tore a page from the book and ripped it in half. Then a chapter.
Soon, there was nothing but scraps of words lttered between her legs and all around her. The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be ant of this.
What good were the words?
The book thief stood and waled carefully to the library door. ~ Markus Zusak

I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant. ~ Markus Zusak

The buildings appear to be glued together, mostly small houses and apartment blocks that looked nervous. There is murky snow spread out like carpet. There is concrete, empty hat-stand trees, and gray air. ~ Markus Zusak

There were heavy beams - planks of sun - falling randomly, wonderfully, onto the road. Clouds arched their backs to lok behind as they started again to move on. 'It's such a beautiful day,' he said, and his voice was in many pieces. A great day to die. A great day to die, like this. ~ Markus Zusak

Steadily, the room shrank, till the book thief could touch the shelves within a few small steps. She ran the back of her hand along the first shelf, listening to the shuffle of her fingernails gliding across the spinal cord of each book. It sounded like an instrument, or the notes of running feet. She used both hands. She raced them. One shelf against the other. And she laughed. Her voice was sprawled out, high in her throat, and when she eventually stopped and stood in the middle of the room, she spent many minutes looking from the shelves to her fingers and back again.

How many books had she touched?

How many had she felt?

She walked over and did it again, this time much slower, with her hand facing forward, allowing the dough of her palm to feel the small hurdle of each book. It felt like magic, like beauty, as bright lines of light shone down from a chandelier. Several times, she almost pulled a title from its place but didn't dare disturb them. They were too perfect. ~ Markus Zusak

Yes, I read it," she replies. "I most certainly did read it. It kept me up all night, I was so angry with it. At this stage of my life, I would rather not be kept up all night. Nor do I wish to have my tears jerked at the rate at which this novel jerked them. The next time you recommend a book to me, I hope you'll keep that in mind, Mr. Fikry." "I will," he says. "And I do apologize, Mrs. Cumberbatch. Most of our customers have rather liked The Book Thief. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

She enjoyed the small fragments of pain. ~ Markus Zusak

I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant ... I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS. ~ Markus Zusak

He stood a few meters from the step and spoke with great conviction, great joy.
"Alles ist Scheisse," he announced.
All is shit. ~ Markus Zusak

If your eyes could speak, what would they say?. ~ Markus Zusak

[D]on't try to know everything. You can't. Find Him in the Word, for the Holy Ghost wrote this Book. He inspired it, and He will be revealed in its pages. ~ A.W. Tozer

The book was sandwiched firmly between Analytic Keys to the Genera and Species of North American Mosses, and the Complete English-Russian Dictionary by A. Alexandrow, which had me actually speculating on just what terrible crimes I might have committed against love and peace in a former life to have earned myself this one. ~ Melissa Jensen

These weren't cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures. ~ Terry Pratchett

A happy birthday this evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness. I could easily have switched on a lamp, but I wanted to ride the day down into night, to sit alone, and smooth the unreadable page with the pale gray ghost of my hand ~ Ted Kooser

A state rep in Oklahoma gave a horrific speech where she felt the homosexual agenda was a greater threat to America than terrorism. People like this - there's not hate in their hearts. They believe what they believe because of the book that they prescribe to. You can't argue with these people. ~ Leslie Jordan

I wasn't the golden girl any longer, but the golden band around my finger more than made up for it. -The Water is Wide ~ Natalie Banks

He[ Italo Calvino] always said it would be impossible to try to make films out of his books, though he hoped it would happen because that's where the money was. ~ Giovanna Cau

Where some people defined their years by grade,I defined mine by the book that changed me the most that year. ~ Dave Connis

I think it helps the writers to sell their books if they announce my attachment. But it doesn't mean that I'm going to make the movies in the next year or two or three. ~ James Franco

That feeling of first love and heartbreak is something inherent in us all, even if we have not yet known it fully. For everyone has watched a film or read a book about love, and for the duration you become the character, feel what they feel, live what they live. ~ Raine Anthony

One person reads the book, and cannot help telling a friend. That is vastly superior to any kind of advertisement, or clever magazine article. That is also the great power of the internet, where people share their opinions without the annoying screen of the media, and so much of the presence of my books has come from the Internet. It's a new era, a new form of war, and I embrace it. ~ Robert Greene

People who love reading are often called bookworms - but that's the wrong way around. It's not you that worms into a book; it's books that worm into you." - Amanda Craig ~ Amanda Craig

I've carried on, in that same tradition, with my kids. Aside from just his brilliance, in my estimation, I think he had one of the great imaginations of the 20th century. One of the reasons why the tradition carries on, all these years later, is because, as a parent, those are the books that you go to and pull off the shelf because they never stop delighting you. ~ Christopher Meledandri

I don't have an interest in any car that isn't good for the environment, other than maybe an aesthetic quality in a picture book. ~ Emile Hirsch

Of the book of God
Thou art a copying,
A mirror, wherein showed
The beauty of the King.
All God ever wrought
Dwelleth not apart;
All thou hast ever sought,
Find it in thy heart. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

A book is the only true land of the free: within its borders, anything is possible ~ Agona Apell

One of the things I love most about acting, that I get to do research and read books, but it's just for me and I don't have to write about it. ~ Ruby Bentall

As a reader, I notice political views regardless of whether or not the book is fiction. What annoys me is when said views do nothing to advance the narrative. ~ Jen Lancaster

Nothing in the next-door world of Dachau impinged on the great winter cycle of Beethoven chamber music played in Munich. No canvases came off museum walls as the butchers strolled reverently past, guide-books in hand. ~ George Steiner

It's an incredible education [for the movie J. Edgar Hoover] . It was like I did a college course on J. Edgar Hoover but not knowing and understanding the history and reading the books, but understanding what motivated this man was the most fascinating part of the research. ~ Dustin Lance Black

When I write a book I'm always questioning the project as a whole. I always feel I might have to just throw it away and forget about it, and I've done that with novels I've started and worked on for a long time. It's an option I need in order to write freely. ~ Daniel Kehlmann

There are many things that make this book fiction, but the roles women play within it are not. The women of the eighteenth century were met with opposition. They had to fight endlessly. Their work was silenced, their contributions ignored, and many of their stories are forgotten today.
Nevertheless, they persisted. ~ Mackenzi Lee

I can't read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

It's so exciting when a book catches traction you didn't even expect (or completely did expect!), and so frustrating when a book never quite catches the traction you know it deserves. But either way it doesn't change the book, it doesn't change how much I love that book, or how thrilled I am to be publishing it. ~ Danielle Dutton

I think it's the source material. 27 Dresses was a famous book, and Devil Wears Prada was also a wonderful book, so it's coming out of the novelists who are really creating these wonderful female characters that we want to see on the big screen. ~ Jerry Bruckheimer

I get very invested in characters, it's the only way I find that I can write a book and really make it work. ~ Gail Simone

For after all, what is there behind, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O lord, give me money, only money. ~ George Orwell

The bond between book reader and book writer has always been a tightly symbiotic one, a means of intellectual and artistic cross-fertilization. The words of the writer act as a catalyst in the mind of the reader, inspiriting new insights, associations, and perceptions, sometimes even epiphanies. And the very existence of the attentive, critical reader provides the spur for the writer's work. It gives the author confidence to explore new forms of expression, to blaze difficult and demanding paths of thought, to venture into uncharted and sometimes hazardous territory. "All great men have written proudly, nor cared to explain," said Emerson. "They knew that the intelligent reader would come at last, and would thank them. ~ Nicholas Carr

So great a contribution to physics was Two New Sciences that scholars have long maintained that the book anticipated Isaac Newton's laws of motion. ~ Stephen Hawking

It was the very fact of the note, stuck on my windshield on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, hundreds of miles from where Fatback had lived and, apparently, died. That, and the small deerskin pouch of tobacco that was tied to it. Fatback was a black Lab - a good dog - who had belonged to Dan, an elderly Lakota man who lived far out on the Dakota plains. Years before, as a result of a book of elders' memories I had done with students at Red Lake, Dan had contacted me to come out to his home to speak with him. His request was vague, and I had been both skeptical and apprehensive. But, reluctantly, I had gone, and it had changed my life. We had worked together, traveled together, and created a book together in which the old man told his stories and memories and thoughts about Indian people and our American land. ~ Kent Nerburn

I love books that create worlds for me that I don't want to leave. I recently lost my entire life to Haruki Murakami - 1Q84. I tell people that book ruined my life in the best possible way. I couldn't think of anything else for weeks after I read it. ~ Sarah Kay

Wagner's philosophy had absolutely nothing to do with Bruckner. Bruckner hadn't written a single word against Jews. Wagner's book on the Jews was one of the most infamous books of the 19th century. ~ Zubin Mehta

The only failed book is the one that was never written, out of fear-of-failure. ~ Giuseppe Bianco

In another kingdom, her secrets wouldn't matter. ~ Rebecca K. Sampson

It wasn't like she hadn't come across hot guys throughout the course of the last three years, so why was her heart racing? Why did she feel flushed? ~ Tami Lund

I've always felt as if writing a novel is like giving birth. After the process is over, I am emotionally exhausted. But then the work's not done. I have to then raise the book to adulthood, through marketing and giveaways and pandhandling for reviews (its college education). And even while I'm nurturing it into something that is well adjusted and lovable, I've got other "kids" that need equal attention. It truly is work. My hat is off to real parents everywhere, who raise human children and novel ones at the same time. You are amazing. ~ Ash Gray

I once tried hawking my own book around the pubs in the hope that, like the Salvation Army, I too could sell to the cerebrally relaxed. It was a disaster. I had beer thrown over me for being a) a nuisance, b) not as good as Wordsworth and c) a nancy for writing poetry in the first place. ~ Peter Finch

Their bodies continued to move together as one, making rhythmic love to each other slowly and thoroughly. And with each thrust, each deliberate movement, the air around them grew thicker, the bind connecting them grew stronger, and their blossoming love grew richer, reaching the depths of their very souls.
-Madison Thorne Grey, Sustenance ~ Madison Thorne Grey

Are you still with this man?
On no, She sniffed. I realized pretty quickly I couldn't marry a man without a bookshelf.
No bookshelf?
In his house. Not even a little one in his loo for the Reader's Digest.
Many people in this country don't read books.
He didn't have one book. Not even a true crime. Or a Jeffrey Archer. I mean, what does that tell you about someone's character? ~ Jojo Moyes

He scanned the page looking for an entry that read, "Help! I'm Almost Thirteen Years Old and I Still Have the Muscles of a Third-Grader!" but apparently Robert's condition was so freakish and rare, the authors of the book didn't even bother to include it. ~ Charles Gilman

The truth is we're all probably more creative than we realize, except we spend our lives watching TV or reading somebody else's book. We never pick up a brush and stand in front of our own easel. ~ Adam Carolla

I firmly believe that every person can gain from owning an active blog and that those who don't will regret it. No matter the topic, a blog article is an asset and a part of your digital persona. The more content you put out there, the bigger your piece of the Internet becomes. So if you don't have a blog then put this book down immediately. Go create a free Wordpress or Tumblr account and start creating content. If you care about your online presence at all, a blog is mandatory. ~ Eric Bieller

The water that flows through the canals is both beautiful and deadly. Its tranquil surface belies that toxins beneath-unpleasant to touch, deadly to imbibe. ~ Fiona Paul

In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.
All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try.
And no one can help me. Not even you. ~ Ray Bradbury