Top 500 Markus Zusak Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “He prefers not to ruin things with any more questions. What it is is what it is.”

— Markus Zusak

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

— Markus Zusak

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

— Markus Zusak

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

— Markus Zusak

405. “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

406. “Every night, Liesel made her way down to the basement. She kept the book with her at all times. For hours, she wrote, attempting each night to complete ten pages of her life. There was so much to consider, so many things in danger of being left out. Just be patient, she told herself, and with the mounting pages, the strength of her writing fist grew.”

— Markus Zusak

407. “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

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

— Markus Zusak

409. “I walk out into the foyer. It’s caked in sunshine.”

— Markus Zusak

410. “On her birthday, it was she who gave a gift – to me. It makes me understand that the best standover man I’ve ever known is not a man at all...”

— Markus Zusak

411. “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

412. “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

413. “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

414. “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

415. “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

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

— Markus Zusak

417. “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

418. “I loved you already then.”

— Markus Zusak

419. “The world is lightening, taking shape, and turning to color.”

— Markus Zusak

420. “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

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

— Markus Zusak

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

— Markus Zusak

423. “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

424. “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

425. “I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it’s getting harder because I want to improve with every book.”

— Markus Zusak

426. “No, I’m not a saint, Sophie. I’m just another stupid human.” We smile a last smile, and I walk away. I feel her watching me, but I don’t look back.”

— Markus Zusak

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

— Markus Zusak

428. “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

429. “You are the epitome of normal.”

— Markus Zusak

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

— Markus Zusak

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

— Markus Zusak

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

— Markus Zusak

433. “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

434. “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

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

— Markus Zusak

436. “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

437. “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

438. “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

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

— Markus Zusak

440. “There was a kind of generosity to her, of heat and sweat and life.”

— Markus Zusak

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

— Markus Zusak

442. “You’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

443. “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

444. “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.”

— Markus Zusak

445. “So many humans. So many colours. They keep triggering inside me. They harass my memory. I see them tall in their heaps, all mounted on top of each other. There is air like plastic, a horizon like setting glue. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking, and there are soft, coal-coloured clouds, beating, like black hearts. And then. There is death. Making his way through all of it. On the surface: unflappable, unwavering. Below: unnerved, untied, and undone.”

— Markus Zusak

446. “They were virtuosos of alliteration and didn’t know it.”

— Markus Zusak

447. “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

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. “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

450. “Those kids, they would’ve loved this place, they would’ve walked and skipped and danced here, all legs and sunny hair. They’d have cartwheeled the lawn, shouting, “And don’t go lookin’ at our knickers, right?”

— Markus Zusak