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To me the question is always this: if a ray of light came out of the sky and said, Your next book will never be published - would you still write it? If the answer is yes, the book is worth writing.

Markus Zusak

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Markus Zusak
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: January 1
Novelist
Writer
Sydney
NSW
Stills
Answer
Still
Worth
Book
Question
Writing
Answers
Always
Came
Never
Write
Published
Would
Next
Rays
Light
Sky

More quotes by Markus Zusak

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… it was raining on Himmel Street when the world ended for Liesel Meminger. The sky was dripping. Like a tap that a child has tried its hardest to turn off but hasn’t quite managed.
Markus Zusak
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The day was gray, the color of Europe.
Markus Zusak
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Two weeks to change the world, fourteen days to destroy it.
Markus Zusak
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I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it.
Markus Zusak
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It was a Monday and they walked on a tightrope to the sun.
Markus Zusak
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There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it - when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were.
Markus Zusak
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I like to tell students, 'I didn't burst on to the literary scene.' I'm never good at things at the beginning. I was terrible at the start. I need to work and work.
Markus Zusak
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A happening was looming. It was out there somewhere beyond the regular enclosed life that I had been living. It was out there, not waiting, but existing. Being. Perhaps it was only slightly wondering if I would come to it.
Markus Zusak
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Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.
Markus Zusak
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When I was growing up, I wanted to be a house painter like my father, but I was always screwing up when I went to work with him. I had a talent for knocking over paint and painting myself into corners. I also realized fairly quickly that painting bored me.
Markus Zusak
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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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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.
Markus Zusak
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Why me?' I ask God. God says nothing. I laugh and the stars watch. It's good to be alive.
Markus Zusak
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Liesel's blood had dried inside of her. It crumbled. She almost broke into pieces on the steps.
Markus Zusak
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I just know that right now, we want to be proud. For once. We want to take the struggle and rise above it. We want to frame it, live it, survive it. We want to put it in our mouths and taste it and never forget it, because it makes us strong.
Markus Zusak
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An eleven-year-old girl is many things, but she is not stupid.
Markus Zusak
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Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man's gentleness, his thereness. (p.36)
Markus Zusak
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His soul sat up. It met me. 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.
Markus Zusak
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Very suddenly. Yes, quite suddenly, I didn't feel like I could handle my feeling of aloneness.
Markus Zusak
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The flyscreen door slammed behind me. My feet dragged. I reached each arm into the jacket. Warm sleeves. Crumpled collar. Hands in pockets. Okay. I walked.
Markus Zusak