“
* When the coughing stopped, there was nothing but the nothingness of life moving on with a shuffle, or a near-silent twitch.
* Mistakes, mistakes, it’s all I seem capable of at times
*No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.
*It’s much easier, she realized, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it
*When death captures me,” the boy vowed, “he will feel my fist on his face.”.
*he’d turned for one last look at his family as he left the apartment. Perhaps then the guilt would not have been so heavy. No final goodbye.
No final grip of the eyes.
Nothing but goneness.
*Wrecked, but somehow not torn into pieces.
*Life had altered in the wildest possible way, but it was imperative that they act as if nothing at all had happened.
*“If we gamble on a Jew,” said Papa soon after, “I would prefer to gamble on a live one,” and from that moment, a new routine was born.
*you should know it yourself—a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.”
*The fire was nothing now but a funeral of smoke, dead and dying, simultaneously.
*Even death has a heart..
* In truth, I think he was afraid. Rudy Steiner was scared of the book thief’s kiss. He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So hard that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them.
*There is death.
Making his way through all of it.
On the surface: unflappable, unwavering.
Below: unnerved, untied, and undone.
*That damn snowman,” she whispered. “I bet it started with the snowman—fooling around with ice and snow in the cold down there.”
Papa was more philosophical. “Rosa, it started with Adolf.”
*There were broken bodies and dead, sweet hearts. Still, it was better than the gas
*They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.
*Sometimes she sat against the wall, longing for the warm finger of paint to wander just once more down the side of her nose, or to watch the sandpaper texture of her papa’s hands. If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter and bread with only the scent of jam spread out on top of it.
*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.
*Silence was not quiet or calm, and it was not peace.
*“I should have known not to give the man some bread. I just didn’t think.”
“Papa, you did nothing wrong.”
“I don’t believe you.
* I’m an idiot.”
No, Papa.
You’re just a man..
*What someone says and what happened are usually two different things
* despised by his homeland, even though he was born in it
*“Of course I told him about you,” Liesel said.
She was saying goodbye and she didn’t even know it.
*Say something enough times and you never forget it
*robbery of his life?
*Those kinds of souls always do—the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, “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. More of them have already found their way to other places
*One could not exist without the other, because for Liesel, both were home. Yes, that’s what Hans Hubermann was for Liesel Meminger
*DEATH AND LIESEL
It has been many years since all of that, but there is still plenty of work to do. I can promise you that the world is a factory. The sun stirs it, the humans rule it. And I remain. I carry them away.
”
”