01c. 1975 ADSteve, 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 / quote ↗
02c. 1975 ADWhen I picked him up originally, the boy's spirit was soft and cold, like ice-cream. He started melting in my arms. Then warming up completely. Healing.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
04c. 1975 ADThe point is, Ilsa Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of her, she succumbed to it. She embraced it.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
05c. 1975 ADIt would then be brought abruptly to an end, for the brightness had shown suffering the way.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
07c. 1975 ADI've wandered through the real world, and written myself through the darkness of the streets inside me. I see people walking through the city and wonder where they've been, and what the moments of their lives have done to them. If they're anything like me, their moments have held them up and shot them down.Sometimes I just survive.But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.That's when the stories show up in me.They find me all the time.They're made of underdogs and fighters. They're made of hunger and desire and trying to live decent.The only trouble is, I don't know which of those stories comes first.Maybe they all just merge into one.We'll see, I guess.I'll let you know when I decide.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
08c. 1975 ADThe impoverished always try to keep moving, as if relocating might help.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
09c. 1975 ADYou’ll have days of complete lack of faith in your abilities. But you have to keep coming back. That’s when you know you’re a writer – when you take the failures and appear at the desk again, over and over again.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
10c. 1975 AD...to swear with a ferocity that can only be described as a talent.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
11c. 1975 ADThat’s when I have to ask him. “Can you really talk like that? Being holy and all?”“What? Because I’m a priest?” He finishes the dregs of his coffee. “Sure. God knows what’s important.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
12c. 1975 ADHe 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.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
13c. 1975 ADHe was the second snowman to be melting away before her eyes, only this one was different. It was a paradox. The colder he became, the more he melted.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
15c. 1975 ADThe only people we want to blame are ourselves, because it will be ourselves that we rely upon.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
16c. 1975 AD... tried praying for him ...but I couldn't. I just couldn't. Don't ask me why. I hoped that he was okay, but I couldn't summon the strength to pray for it.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
17c. 1975 ADYou should know it yourself- a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
18c. 1975 ADThe thing is, I don't even hate cops. To tell you the truth, I actually feel a little sorry for them.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
19c. 1975 ADThat was when the world wasn't so big and I could see everywhere. It was when my father was a hero and not a human.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
20c. 1975 ADWe are wolves, which are wild dogs, and this is our place in the city. We are small and our house is small on our small urban street. We can see the city and the train line and it's beautiful in its own dangerous way. Dangerous because it's shared and taken and fought for.That's the best way I can put it, and thinking about it, when I walk past the tiny houses on our street, I wonder about the stories inside them. I wonder hard, because houses must have walls and rooftops for a reason. My only query is the windows. Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out?Markus Zusak / quote ↗
21c. 1975 ADThere was an itchy lung for a last cigarette and an immense, magnetic pull toward the basement, for the girl who was his daughter and was writing a book down there he hoped to read one day. Liesel. His soul whispered it as I carried him. But there was no Liesel in that house. Not for me, anyway.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
22c. 1975 ADYou know,' she begins, 'you fellas ought to be looking after each other.' Her comment makes me realise that through the lies, the greatest irony is that we are looking out for each other. It's just that in the end, we're letting her down. That's what injures us.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
24c. 1975 ADI don't want to stand in naked silence, pathetically unaware of how to be.Markus Zusak / quote ↗
