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

And they would all smile at the beauty of destruction.

Her teeth were like a soccer crowd, crammed in.

If you can't imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.

Liesel crossed the bridge over the Amper River. The water was glorious and emerald and rich. She could see the stones at the bottom and hear the familiar song of water. The world did not deserve such a river.

She could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around her.

Steam was rising weirdly from his clothes. His hangover was visible. It heaved itself to his shoulders and sat there like a bag of wet cement.

The point is, it didn't really matter what the book was about. It was what it meant that was important.

They're the ones I can't stand to look at, although on occasion I still fail. 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. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs.

You can't eat books, sweetheart.

As always, one of her books was next to her.

Her wrinkles were like slander. Her voice was akin to a beating with a stick.

I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty and I wonder how the same can be both.

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

She couldn't help it. I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate.

The best word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words.

The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?

Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.

You see?Even death has a heart.

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

His eyes did not do anything that shock normally describes. No snapping, no slapping, no jolt. Those things happen when you wake from a bad dream, not when you wake into one.

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...

Liesel was sure her mother carried the memory of him, slung over her shoulder. She dropped him. She saw his feet and legs and body slap the platform.

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 bittersweetness of uncertainty: To win or to lose.

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

Two weeks to change the world, and fourteen days to ruin it.

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

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

His eyes were cold and brown - like coffee stains…

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