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

He left Himmel Street wearing his hangover and a suit.

It's hard to not like a man who not only notices the colors, but speaks them

Some of you are most likely thinking that white is not really a color and all of that tired sort of nonsense. Well, I'm here to tell you that it is. White is without question a color, and personally, I don't think you want to argue with me.

There were stars. They burned my eyes.

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

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

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

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.

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?

At first, she could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him?

In the basement of 33 Himmel Street, Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of an entire nation. One by one they climbed into the ring to beat him down. They made him bleed. They let him suffer. Millions of them--until one last time, when he gathered himself to his feet...

She didn't dare to look up, but she could feel their frightened eyes hanging onto her as she hauled the words in and breathed them out. A voice played the notes inside her. This, it said, is your accordion.

The scribbled signature black, onto the blinding global white, onto the thick soupy red.

You're a human, you should understand self-obsession.

He was hanging from one of the rafters in a laundry up near Frau Diller's. Another human pendulum. Another clock, stopped.

It's my heart that is tired. A thirteen-year-old heart shouldn't feel like this.

Sometimes I imagined how everything looked above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye

They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.

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.

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

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

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

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.

But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?

In the written words of the book thief herself, the journey continued like everything had happened.

She didn't see him watching as he played, having no idea that Hans Hubermann's accordion was a story. In the times ahead, that story would arrive at 33 Himmel Street in the early hours of morning, wearing ruffled shoulders and a shivering jacket. It would carry a suitcase, a book, and two questions. A story. Story after story. Story within story.

The silence was always the greates temptation.

He was skinny with soft hair, and his thick, murky eyes watched as the stranger played one more song in the heavy room. From face to face, he looked on as the man played and the woman wept. The different notes handled her eyes. Such sadness.

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

Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.