Top 500 Markus Zusak Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “We all have our duties here. We all suffer. We all endure our setbacks for the greater good of mankind.”

— Markus Zusak

302. “Now I’ve changed things. I’ve left my own fingerprints on the world, no matter how small, and it’s upset the equilibrium of us.”

— Markus Zusak

303. “There were not many people who could say that their education had been paid for with cigarettes.”

— Markus Zusak

304. “I certainly wasn’t born with creative writing. Maybe there’s a certain amount of learning and then it’s up to the person. I think in the end it’s your favourite books that are the best teachers. That’s the way I’ve learned the most, by far.”

— Markus Zusak

305. “I actually feel quite self-indulgent at the moment, telling you all about me, me, me. My travels, what I saw in ’42. On the other hand, you’re a human – you should understand self-obsession.”

— Markus Zusak

306. “My voice is like a rumour. I’m not sure if it came out or not, or if it is true.”

— Markus Zusak

307. “Snowflakes of ash fell so lovelily you were tempted to stretch out your tongue to catch them, taste them. Only, they would have scorched your lips. They would have cooked your mouth.”

— Markus Zusak

308. “The beauty of my work is that my sets cost nothing. That’s what I love about being a writer of novels.”

— Markus Zusak

309. “I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come.” Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out.”

— Markus Zusak

310. “There was also a rumor that later in the day, she walked fully clothed into the Amper River and said something very strange. Something about a kiss. Something about a Saumensch. How many times did she have to say goodbye?”

— Markus Zusak

311. “Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.”

— Markus Zusak

312. “My soul needs yours.”

— Markus Zusak

313. “It kind of depressed me to think a human could be so lonely that she would comfort herself with the company of appliances that whistle, and sit alone to eat.”

— Markus Zusak

314. “My own eyes try to sleep, but they don’t. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence drops down, like measured thought.”

— Markus Zusak

315. “We skip the moments like stones.”

— Markus Zusak

316. “Her fingertips are made of love. When she speaks, her voice is made of love.”

— Markus Zusak

317. “Outside is dark. The kitchen light is loud. It deafens me as I walk towards it.”

— Markus Zusak

318. “When her hands reached out and poured the tea, it was as if she also poured something into me while I sat there sweating in my cab. It was like she held a string and pulled on it just slightly to open me up. She got in, put a piece of herself inside me, and left again.”

— Markus Zusak

319. “But neither of us knows, because a fight’s worth nothing if you know from the start that you’re going to win it.”

— Markus Zusak

320. “Disbelief held me down inside my footsteps, making my body heavy but my heart wild.”

— Markus Zusak

321. “Again, Himmel Street was a trail of people, and again, Papa left his accordion. Rosa reminded him to take it, but he refused. ‘I didn’t take it last time,’ he explained, ‘and we lived.’ War clearly blurred the distinction between logic and superstition.”

— Markus Zusak

322. “She enjoyed the small fragments of pain.”

— Markus Zusak

323. “If nothing else, they died fast and they were warm. The boy from the plane, I thought. The one with the teddy bear. Where was Rudy’s confort? Where was someone to alleviate this robbery of his life? Who was there to soothe him as life’s rug was snatched from under his sleeping feet?”

— Markus Zusak

324. “The last thing I wanted was to look down at the stranded face of my teenager. A pretty girl. Her whole death was now ahead of her.”

— Markus Zusak

325. “Crowds of questions stream through me like lines of people exiting a soccer ground or a concert. They push and shove and trip. Some make their way around. Some remain in their seats, waiting for their opportunity.”

— Markus Zusak

326. “I’m compelled to continue on, because although it’s not true for every person on earth, it’s true for the vast majority – that death waits for no man – and if he does, he doesn’t usually wait very long.”

— Markus Zusak

327. “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.”

— Markus Zusak

328. “The juggling comes to an end now, but the struggling does not. I have Liesel Meminger in one hand, Max Vandenburg in the other. Soon I will clap them together. Just give me a few pages.”

— Markus Zusak

329. “There was sex, of course. Nakedness. Wall to wall, in and out of my thoughts. But when it was over it was her whispering voice I craved, and a human curled up in my arms.”

— Markus Zusak

330. “Sometimes you go to the wrong place, but the right way comes and finds you.”

— Markus Zusak

331. “Very suddenly. Yes, quite suddenly, I didn’t feel like I could handle my feeling of aloneness.”

— Markus Zusak

332. “We both laugh and run and the moment is so thick around me that i feel like dropping into it to let it carry me.”

— Markus Zusak

333. “What good are the words?”

— Markus Zusak

334. “Yes, I’m often reminded of her, and in one of my array of pockets, I have kept her story to retell. It is one of the small legion I carry, each one extraordinary in its own right. Each one an attempt – an immense leap of an attempt – to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it.”

— Markus Zusak

335. “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.”

— Markus Zusak

336. “He’s most likely robbing the bank as a paycheck on the world for winning the ugliness prize at his local fete three years running.”

— Markus Zusak

337. “I don’t really know that this story has a whole lot of things happen in it. It doesn’t really. It’s just a record of how things were in my life during this last winter. I guess things happened, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

— Markus Zusak

338. “He’d probably say that he was exercising his God-given right to stupidity.”

— Markus Zusak

339. “I love and hate this place because it is full of words.”

— Markus Zusak

340. “For at least twenty minutes she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words – their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. It he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again?”

— Markus Zusak

341. “I looked at myself in that window, oblivious to all the people around me and I stared and smiled that particular smile. You know that smile that seems to knock you and tell you how pathetic you are? That’s the smile I was smiling.”

— Markus Zusak

342. “I guess if editing doesn’t hurt, you’re probably not doing it properly. I find it quite difficult. The hardest part is believing that it’s actually working and getting rid of the doubt that always creeps in.”

— Markus Zusak

343. “I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please, trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that’s only the A’s. Just don’t ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.”

— Markus Zusak

344. “The buildings appear to be glued together, mostly small houses and apartment blocks that looked nervous. There is murky snow spread out like carpet. There is concrete, empty hat-stand trees, and gray air.”

— Markus Zusak

345. “It was like she held a string and pulled on it just slightly to open me up. She got in, put a piece of herself inside me, and left again. In there, somewhere, I still feel it.”

— Markus Zusak

346. “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.”

— Markus Zusak

347. “You don’t shoot a dog when it is already dead.”

— Markus Zusak

348. “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.”

— Markus Zusak

349. “Soon evening worked its way into the sky, and the city hunched itself down.”

— Markus Zusak

350. “The days and nights come apart. I feel them corroding at the seams.”

— Markus Zusak