Markus Zusak’s “The Book Thief” Quotes (140 Quotes)

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

How do you tell if something's alive? You check for breathing.

In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.

She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did.

The book thief has struck for the first time - the beginning of an illustrious career.

The sky was murky and deep, like quicksand. There was a young man parcelled up in barbed wire, like a crown of thorns. I untangled him and carried him out. High above the earth, we sank together, to our knees. It was just another day, 1918.

What great malice there could be in allowing something to live.

Certainly war meant dying, but it always shifted the ground beneath a person's feet when it was someone who had once lived and breathed in close proximity.

Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

It kills me sometimes, how people die.

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.

She wanted none of those days to end, and it was always with disappointment that she watched the darkness stride forward.

The commitment had disappeared, and although he still watched the imagined glory of stealing, she could see now he was not believing. He was trying to believe it, and that's never a good sign.

The soft-spoken words fell off the side of the bed, emptying to the floor like powder.

When death captures me, he will feel my fist on his face.

Could she smell my breath? Could she hear my cursed circular heart beat revolving like the crime it is in my deathly chest?

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

It was a Monday and they walked on a tightrope to the sun.

Mistakes, mistakes, it's all I seem capable of at times.

She was a girl with a mountain to climb.

The day was gray, the color of Europe.

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

When finally she finished and stood herself up, he put his arm around her, best-buddy style, and they walked on. There was no request for a kiss. Nothing like that. You can love Rudy for that, if you like.

A bathrobe answered the door. Inside it, a woman...

Death waits for no man - and if he does, he doesn't usually wait for very long.

I can promise you that the world is a factory. The sun stirs it, the humans rule it. And I remain. I carry them away.- spoken by death

It was a style not of perfection, but warmth. Even mistakes had a good feeling about them

No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.

She was battered and beaten up, and not smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words.

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.

The words. Why did they have to exist? Without words, the Fuhrer was nothing.

When it came down to it, one of them called the shots. The other did what he was told. The question is, what if the other is a lot more than one?

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.

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

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

It was one of those moments of perfect tiredness, of having conquered not only the work at hand, but the night who had blocked the way.

Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children.

She was like a lone angel floating above the surface of the earth, laughing with delight because she could fly but crying out of loneliness.

The human child - so much cannier at times than the stupefyingly ponderous adult.

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

When Liesel left that day, she said something with great uneasiness. In translation, two giant words were struggled with, carried on her shoulder, and dropped as a bungling pair at Ilsa Hermann's feet. They fell off sideways as the girl veered with them and could no longer sustain their weight. Together, they sat on the floor, large and loud and clumsy. Two giant words...I'm sorry.

A REASSURING ANNOUNCEMENT Please, be calm, despite that previous threat. I am all bluster - I am not violent. I am not malicious. I am a result.

Fear is shiny. Ruthless in the eyes.

I have to say that although it broke my heart, I was, and still am, glad I was there.

It was Russia, January 5, 1943, and just another icy day. Out among the city and snow, there were dead Russians and Germans everywhere. Those who remained were firing into the blank pages in front of them. Three languages interwove. The Russian, the bullets, the German.

Of course, I'm being rude. I'm spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don't have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me. There are many things to think of. There is much story.

She was saying goodbye and she didn't even know it.

The last time I saw her was red. The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring. In some places, it was burned. There were black crumbs, and pepper, streaked across the redness.

There was also an acknowledgment that there was great beauty in what she was currently witnessing, and she chose not to disturb it.