BOOK THIEF QUOTES ABOUT DEATH

“He stood in one place, waiting for something, and I could see that his blue eyes were still working. He was measuring me with them. There was a degree of amusement. Something malevolent. Something close to amusement. Or at least that’s what I chose to believe.”

“I do not carry a sickle or scythe. I only wear a hooded black robe when it’s cold. And I don’t have those skull-like features you seem to enjoy pinning on me from a distance. I don’t tin my teeth with gold, and I don’t use them to bite out souls, as far as I know.”

“Everyone’s dying around me, too. I suppose if I get used to it, and then I start not caring as much.”

“It kills me sometimes, how people die.”

“I could tell you who’s going to die tonight.”

“Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love ones suffer, and I cared for them. When I left, I carried them with me. Sometimes, I carry them still.”

“I am haunted by humans.”

“A small piece of truth. I do not carry a sickle or scythe. I only wear a hooded black robe when it’s cold. And I don’t have those skull-like features you seem to enjoy pinning on me from a distance. You want to know what I truly look like? I’ll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue.”

“To most people, death is the great reaper. But to me, death is a peculiar friend.”

“The consequences of his vigilance were also far from predictable. The sky did not darken. The bells did not ring. Hell did not freeze over. The black forest did not suddenly reappear around him.”

“The cruelty of death, I understood.”

“Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things – naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror – are too terrible to really grasp ever at all.”

“You were right. I did lie. My one comfort is that I lied to myself about you. Death will heal me. Maybe death will even save me.” MOTIVATIONAL QUOTES FOR MY HUSBAND

“She was the book thief without the words. Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out. Like rain.”

“People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it’s quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment.”

“The departure of a soul from a body was neither sudden nor miraculous. Even with its many fluidities, its undulations, and its depths and shallows, it was simply a steal from one chair to another.”

“She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Liesel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, softly in the corner of his mouth. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist’s suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers… She did not say goodbye. She was incapable, and after a few more minutes at his side, she was able to tear herself from the ground. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on…”

“And the sky above Ariminium filled with cannon-quick fists and mouthfuls of stony steel, foronly a fool could argue, with its sterness and heavy delvings into gravestones, against the hammer of spirit it takes to kill and still sleep each night.”

“She did not know what she was waiting for. Death? Life? Or for the universe to light up in its cosmic, dazzling way? Everybody had to wait until the universe allowed them to be seen.”

“There was nothing to hold on to. That was the difficult thing about death. It always had to happen in this way. One moment there was plenty of time, and the next there was none.”

“She had been coughing for months, but she still went to work. She coughed while her clothes were washed, and she coughed while the washerwoman hung them to dry in the icy winter air. She coughed on paths and in front of doorways and all the long way down the road. She coughed, and at thirteen, Liesel Meminger, too, coughed.”

“During the following twenty-four hours, the town carried on with the peaks and troughs of its typical array of chaos.”

“In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer—proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.”

“You cannot talk like that! You need to be more like Rudy. When he mouths off, you have to stand in his way or put your hand over his mouth. If you don’t, his stupidity drifts into your brain.”