Top 500 Markus Zusak Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “I walk out into the foyer. It’s caked in sunshine.”

— Markus Zusak

402. “You can do anything when it’s not real.”

— Markus Zusak

403. “That’s the beauty of books. In so many ways, they never really end.”

— Markus Zusak

404. “He was caught somewhere, in the current – of destroying everything he had, to become all he needed to be.”

— Markus Zusak

405. “Yet each day, he managed to unravel and straighten himself, disgusted and thankful. Wrecked, but somehow not torn into pieces.”

— Markus Zusak

406. “I’m not one of these ‘the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me’ kind of writers. Wish it was like that.”

— Markus Zusak

407. “He was a great horse,” she went on, “and the perfect story – we wouldn’t love him so much if he’d lived.”

— Markus Zusak

408. “She slept a lot and didn’t dream, and on most occasions she was sorry to wake up. Everything disappeared when she was asleep.”

— Markus Zusak

409. “As for me, I remained a few moments longer. I waved. No one waved back.”

— Markus Zusak

410. “When you wait you start feeling deserved.”

— Markus Zusak

411. “She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Liesel kissed her best friend Rudy Steiner soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist’s suit collection.”

— Markus Zusak

412. “Winning wasn’t natural for me. It had to be fought for, in the echoes and trodden footprints of my mind.”

— Markus Zusak

413. “You can do anything when it’s not real. When it is real, nothing breaks your fall. Nothing gets between you and the ground.”

— Markus Zusak

414. “Don’t think, I told myself. Think nothingness. But even nothingness was something. It was a thought.”

— Markus Zusak

415. “Can a wolfe be beautiful?”

— Markus Zusak

416. “He prefers not to ruin things with any more questions. What it is is what it is.”

— Markus Zusak

417. “The thing is, I don’t even hate cops. To tell you the truth, I actually feel a little sorry for them.”

— Markus Zusak

418. “All that remained was to get to camp, learn English better, find a job and a place to live. Then, most importantly, buy a bookshelf. And a piano.”

— Markus Zusak

419. “You are the epitome of normal.”

— Markus Zusak

420. “Because you don’t learn anything unless you can find the patience to read. TV takes that away from you. It robs you from your mind.”

— Markus Zusak

421. “I loved you already then.”

— Markus Zusak

422. “You should give it to Max, Liesel. See if you can leave it on the bedside table, like all the other things.” Liesel watched him as if he’d gone insane. “How, though?” Lightly, he tapped her skull with his knuckles. “Memorize it. Then write it down for him.”

— Markus Zusak

423. “He 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

424. “She closes the door completely, and I crouch there. I allow myself to fall forward and rest my head on the door frame. My breath bleeds. My heartbeat drowns my ears.”

— Markus Zusak

425. “It could be worse. I could be you.”

— Markus Zusak

426. “As if sensing the oncoming theatre, the pigeons arrived from nowhere, and dug in close on the powerlines. They were perched on TV aerials, and, God forbid, on the trees. There was also a single crow, fat-feathered and plump, like a pigeon disguised in a trench coat.”

— Markus Zusak

427. “But neither of us knows, because a fight’s worth nothing if you know from the beginning that you’re going to win. It’s the ones in between that test you. They’re the ones that bring questions with them.”

— Markus Zusak

428. “Only hearts... They’re in the inside of the inside of me.”

— Markus Zusak

429. “I wish I could hold up that knife and tear open the world. I’d slice it open and climb through to the next one.”

— Markus Zusak

430. “I’ve been a writer since I was 16. I didn’t get published until I was 24. I know that sounds crazy.”

— Markus Zusak

431. “White is without question a color, and personally, I don’t think you want to argue with me.”

— Markus Zusak

432. “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.”

— Markus Zusak

433. “The dilemma, of course, was the communism. A single great idea. A thousand limits and flaws. Growing up, Penelope never noticed. What child ever does? There was nothing to compare it to.”

— Markus Zusak

434. “That was when the world wasn’t so big and I could see everywhere.”

— Markus Zusak

435. “It was then that he also took the opportunity to say he was sorry that the Hubermann’s son had not come home, In response, Papa told him that such things were out of their control. “After all,” he said, “you should know it yourself – a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.”

— Markus Zusak

436. “She was lost in pine and mountainside, her knuckles bony white.”

— Markus Zusak

437. “When I find research really rewarding is when one piece of information gives you an idea for a story. That’s when it’s great.”

— Markus Zusak

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

438. “One good punch from Rube on me would send the sky into my head and the clouds into my lungs. I just always tried to stay up.”

— Markus Zusak

439. “When it was over, they lay on their backs; there was a window on this, the top floor of the stairwell, and grubby light, and rising-falling chests. The air was heavy. Tons of it, heaping from their lungs. Henry gulped it good and hard, but his mouth showed true heart.”

— Markus Zusak

440. “The town itself was a hard, distant storyland; you could see it from afar. There was all the straw-like landscape, and marathons of sky. Around it, a wilderness of low scrub and gum trees stood close by, and it was true, it was so damn true: the people sloped and slouched.”

— Markus Zusak

441. “From a distance, people observed. Such a thing was easier from far away.”

— Markus Zusak

442. “She couldn’t ever see how broken he was, while the rest of us stood and watched them. She was in jeans, bare feet and T-shirt, and maybe that’s what finished us off. She looked just like a Dunbar boy. With that haircut she was one of us.”

— Markus Zusak

443. “At the end of the day, it’s still up to you, and that’s the beauty of books. In so many ways, they never really end.”

— Markus Zusak

444. “I’m not a writer who refuses to talk about a book until I’ve finished.”

— Markus Zusak

445. “A murderer should probably do many things, but he should never, under any circumstances, come home.”

— Markus Zusak

446. “I’ve come to the realization that I really only want to write books that maybe I can’t write.”

— Markus Zusak

447. “Around six-thirty, Rory was across the street, leaning against a telegraph pole, smiling just for laughs; the world was filthy, and so was he. After a short search, he pulled a long strand of girls’ hair from his mouth. Whoever she was, she was out there somewhere, she lay open-legged in Rory’s head. A girl we’ll never know, or see.”

— Markus Zusak

448. “No snapping, slapping, no jolt. Those things happen when you wake from a bad dream, not when you wake into one.”

— Markus Zusak

449. “Don’t get caught.′ This from a man who’d stolen a Jew.”

— Markus Zusak

450. “Or had she always loved him? It’s likely. Restricted as she was from speaking, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to drag her hand across and pull her over. It didn’t matter where. Her mouth, her neck, her cheek. Her skin was empty for it, waiting.”

— Markus Zusak