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The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder. They breathed. German and Jewish lungs.

Markus Zusak

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Markus Zusak
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: January 1
Novelist
Writer
Sydney
NSW
Hands
Shoulders
Stairs
Looked
Lungs
Sweet
Shoulder
Scrawled
Wall
German
Magnificently
Hand
Stood
Jagged
Practice
Jewish
Breathed
Words
Jew
Childlike
Girl
Hidden
Slept

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Very suddenly. Yes, quite suddenly, I didn't feel like I could handle my feeling of aloneness.
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Each night, Liesel would step outside, wipe the door, and watch the sky. Usually it was like spillage - cold and heavy, slippery and gray - but once in a while some stars had the nerve to rise and float, if only for a few minutes. On those nights, she would stay a little longer and wait. Hello, stars.
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She was a girl with a mountain to climb.
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My own eyes try to sleep, but they don't. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence drops down, like measured thought.
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They'd been standing like that for thirty seconds of forever.
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The paper landed on the table, but the news was stapled to his chest. A tattoo.
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I certainly wasn't born with creative writing. Maybe there's a certain amount of learning and then it's up to the person. I think in the end it's your favourite books that are the best teachers. That's the way I've learned the most, by far.
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I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that night, excluding the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the advice, my imagined feet walking into the kitchen and down the corridor.
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I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.
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The point is, Ilsa Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of her, she succumbed to it. She embraced it.
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They were glued down, every last one of them. A packet of souls. Was it fate?Misfortune?Is that what glued them down like that?Of course not.Let's not be stupid.It probably had more to do with the hurled bombs, thrown down by humans hiding in the clouds.
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It's insane to be a writer and not be a reader. When I'm writing I'm more likely to be reading four or five books at once, just in bits and pieces rather than subjecting myself to a really brilliant book and thinking, Well what's the point of me writing anything? I'm more likely to read a book through when I take a break from writing.
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I love and hate this place because it is full of words.
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As a child in Sydney, my German Mum and my Austrian Dad would spontaneously tell me stories about what they saw and what they did as children. It was like a piece of Europe coming into our house... Those stories led me to my writing.
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I thought what if death is more like thinking, well, war is like the boss at your shoulder, constantly wanting more, wanting more, wanting more, and then that gave me the idea that Death is weary, he's fatigued, and he's haunted by what he sees humans do to each other because he's on hand for all of our great miseries.
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Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.
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When she faced the noise, she found the mayor’s wife in a brand-new bathrobe and slippers. On the breast pocket of the robe sat an embroidered swastika. Propaganda even reached the bathroom.
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It’s all very well for such a person to whine and moan and criticize other family members, but they won’t let anyone else do it. That’s when you get your back up and show loyalty.
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The question is what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?
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The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.
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