Best 460 quotes of Markus Zusak on MyQuotes

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.

I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that night, excluding the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the advice, my imagined feet walking into the kitchen and down the corridor.

I procrastinate in spades. In my defence, I also try to have all other distractions solved before I can concentrate on writing. My small theory is that to write for three hours, you need to feel like you have three days. To write for three days, you need to feel like you've got three weeks, and so on.

I read some books that were the right books for me. I read them and I didn't even notice turning the pages anymore. I thought, "That's what I want to do with my life.

I see how complicated it is to make a film and how many people are involved and I love the fact that I get to sit in a room on my own and the set costs nothing and the actors cost nothing and I'm the director and it's so simple. You just need a pen and paper to make a book. You don't need a huge budget or a gaffer or a best boy.

I s'pose, I can't have it all my own way, can I? You can't drown in a person unless they let you.

Is there cowardice with the acknowledgement of fear?

I stood there and stared, into the sky and at the city around me. I stood, hands at my side, and I saw what had happened to me and who I was and the way things would always be for me. Truth. There was no more wishing, or wondering. I knew who I was, and what I would always do. I believed it, as my teeth touched and my eyes were overrun.

I suppose he'll die soon. I'm expecting it, like you do for a dog that's seventeen. There's no way to know how I'll react. He'll have faced his own placid death and slipped without a sound inside himself. Mostly, I imagine I'll crouch there at the door, fall onto him, and cry hard into the stench of his fur. I'll wait for him to wake up, but he won't. I'll bury him. I'll carry him outside, feeling his warmth turn to cold as the horizon frays and falls down in my backyard. For now, though, he's okay. I can see him breathing. He just smells like he's dead.

It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words. You bastards, she thought. You lovely bastards. Don’t make me happy. Please, don’t fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this.

It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it has pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice. As you may expect, someone has died.

I think, as the writer, you're always going to mourn something [left out of a film]. But you also just want to know there's a good reason for it being left out. On the whole, you want to give something to somebody creative. The worst thing you can do is say, "Here, be creative, but do it like I want you to do it." I was always very mindful of that.

I think she ate a salad and some soup. And loneliness. She ate that, too.

I think that as a writer your responsibility is to search for and stir up the things that are in this world. There is violence in all of us, and beauty, and strength, and weakness. What's my job? To only write about the good and the beauty, or is it to write about all of it? That's my greater responsibility, to write about them as I see them and as they are.

I think 'The Lord Of The Rings' is the mother of all cult books, because you can be in that cult and not even know you're in it.

I think to be writer you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.

I thought what if death is more like thinking, well, war is like the boss at your shoulder, constantly wanting more, wanting more, wanting more, and then that gave me the idea that Death is weary, he's fatigued, and he's haunted by what he sees humans do to each other because he's on hand for all of our great miseries.

I traveled the globe as always, handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity.

It's about glowing lights and small things that are big.

It’s all very well for such a person to whine and moan and criticize other family members, but they won’t let anyone else do it. That’s when you get your back up and show loyalty.

It’s a small story really, about, among other things: * A girl * Some words * An accordionist * Some fanatical Germans * A Jewish fist fighter * And quite a lot of thievery

It's funny, don't you think, how time seems to do a lot of things? It flies, it tells, and worst of all, it runs out.

It's insane to be a writer and not be a reader. When I'm writing I'm more likely to be reading four or five books at once, just in bits and pieces rather than subjecting myself to a really brilliant book and thinking, "Well what's the point of me writing anything?" I'm more likely to read a book through when I take a break from writing.

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

It's not a big thing, but I guess it's true--big things are often just small things that are noticed.

It's not so much that the old friend is a better friend. It's just that you know the person better, and you know they don't really care if you're acting like a poor, grovelling idiot. They know you would do the same for them.

It’s the leftover humans. The survivors. They’re the ones I can’t stand to look at, although on many occasions 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 surprises. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs. Which in turn brings me to the subject I am telling you about tonight, or today, or whatever the hour and color. It’s the story of one of those perpetual survivors –an expert at being left behind.

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

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

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.

… it was raining on Himmel Street when the world ended for Liesel Meminger. The sky was dripping. Like a tap that a child has tried its hardest to turn off but hasn’t quite managed.

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.

It would then be brought abruptly to an end, for the brightness had shown suffering the way.

I walked home, seeing all my doubt from the other side. Have you ever seen that? Like when you go on holiday. On the way back, everything is the same but it looks a little different than it did on the way. It's because you're seeing it backwards.

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 wanted to drown inside a woman in the feeling and drooling of the love I could give her. I wanted her pulse to crush me with its intensity. That's what I wanted. That's what I wanted myself to be.

I want to talk to him. I want to ask him about that girl and if he loved her and still misses her.

I want to talk to him. I want to ask him about that girl and if he loved her and still misses her. Nothing, however, exits my mouth. How well do we really let ourselves know each other? There's a long quietness until I finally break it open. It reminds me of someone breaking bread and handing it out. In my case, I hand out a question to my friend.

I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.

I watch the beauty for as long as I can, then turn and face the rest of it.

July 24, 6:03 A.M. The laundry was warm and the rafters were firm, and Michael Holzapfel jumped from the chair as if it were a cliff... Michael Holzapfel knew what he was doing. He killed himself for wanting to live.

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

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.

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

Liesel's blood had dried inside of her. It crumbled. She almost broke into pieces on the steps.

Liesel shrugged away entirely from the crowd and entered the tide of Jews, weaving through them till she grabbed hold of his arm with her left hand. His face fell on her. It reached down as she tripped, and the Jew,the nasty Jew, helped her up. It took all of his strength.

Living in Sydney, I've taken the chance to start surfing again. One of my best memories of growing up is catching my first proper wave and surfing across it and my brother cheering at me from the shore.

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.

Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. 'There were stars,' He said. 'They burned my eyes.’ ...from a Himmel street window, he wrote, the stars set fire to my eyes.

Maybe one morning I’ll wake up and step outside of myself to look back at the old me lying dead among the sheets.