When 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

When you looked out my window you could see the whole city crouched under a blanket of car smog.

— Markus Zusak

Whoever named Kimmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that it been a living hell. It wasn't. But is sure as hell wasn't heaven, either.

— Markus Zusak

Why can’t the world hear? I ask myself. Within a few moments I ask it many times. Because it doesn’t care, I finally answer, and I know I’m right. It’s like I’ve been chosen. But chosen for what? I ask.

— Markus Zusak

Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? Our own place is small perhaps, but when your old man is eaten up by his own shadow, you realize maybe that in every house, something so savage and sad and brilliant is standing up, without the world even seeing it. Maybe that's what these pages of words are about. Bringing the world to the window.

— Markus Zusak

You can't eat books, sweetheart.

— Markus Zusak

You don't always get what you wish for. Especially in Nazi Germany

— Markus Zusak

You know,' she begins, 'you fellas ought to be looking after each other.' Her comment makes me realize 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

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

You might well ask just what the hell he was thinking. The answer is, probably nothing at all. He'd probably say he was exercising his God-given right to stupidity.

— Markus Zusak