Sometimes people are beautiful.Not in looks.Not in what they say.Just in what they are.

The bombs were coming-and so was I.

They’re strange, those wars.Full of blood and violence – but full of stories that are equally difficult to fanthom. “It’s true,” people will mutter. “I don’t care if you don’t belive me. It was the fox who saved my life” or, “They died on either side of me and I was left standing there, the...

I actually feel quite self-indulgent at the moment, telling you all about me, me, me.(…) On the other hand, you’re a human -you should understand self obsession.

Already, I know that all of this will stay with me forever. It’ll haunt me, but I also fear it will make me feel grateful. I say fear because at times I really don’t want this to be a fond memory until it’s over. I also fear that nothing really ends at the en. Things...

How could she ever know that someone would pick her story up and carry it with him everywhere?

The night is alive with stars, and when I lie down and look up, I get lost up there. I feel like I’m falling, but upward, into the abyss of sky above me.

The buildings appear to be glued together, mostly small houses and apartment blocks that looked nervous. There is murky snow spread out like carpet. There is concrete, empty hat-stand trees, and gray air.

It makes me wonder, Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or forget things? Do we spend most of our time running towards or away from our lives? I don’t know.

I stood there and stared, into the sky and at the city around me. I stood, hands at my side, and I saw what had happened to me and who I was and the way things would always be for me. Truth. There was no more wishing, or wondering. I knew who I was, and...

DÖDENS DAGBOK: PARISARNA Sommaren kom.För boktjuven var allt frid och fröjd. Dör mig – var himlen judefärgad. När deras kroppar hade slutat söka efter springor i dörren steg deras själar upp. När deras naglar hade klöst mot träet och i vissa fall satt fastnaglade i det av blotta kraften i desperationen, kom deras själar mot...

She was holding desperately on to the words who had saved her life.” The Book Thief

The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn’t be any of this.

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.

We used to languish when we walked, or sidle down the street like dogs that have just done something wrong. Now Rube walks upright, because he’s on the attack.

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.

I try hard and aim big. People can hate or love my books but they can never accuse me of not trying.

One good punch from Rube on me would send the sky into my head and the clouds into my lungs. I just always tried to stay up.

***HERE IS A SMALL FACT*** You are going to die.

In the darkness of my dark-beating heart, I know. He’d have loved it, all right.

So I saw that there was only me. There was only me who could worry about what was happening here, inside these walls of my life. Other people had their own worlds to worry about, and in the end, they had to fend for themselves, just like us.

I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right. – Liesel Meminger

That was when the world wasn’t so big and I could see everywhere. It was when my father was a hero and not a human.

Personally, I like a chocolate-covered sky. Dark, dark chocolate. People say it suits me. I do, however, try to enjoy every color I see – the whole spectrum. A billion or so flavors, none of them quite the same, and a sky to slowly suck on. It takes the edge off the stress. It helps...

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

Their heartbeats fought each other, a mess of rhythm. Liesel tried to eat hers down. The taste of heart was not too cheerful.

Maybe everyone can live beyond what they’re capable of.

How do you tell if something’s alive? You check for breathing.

1. The desperate Jews – their spirits in my lap as we sat on the roof, next to the steaming chimneys.2. The Russian soldiers – taking only small amounts of ammunition, relying on the fallen for the rest of it.3. The soaked bodies of a French coast – beached on the shingle and sand.

a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.

She was like a lone angel floating above the surface of the earth, laughing with delight because she could fly but crying out of loneliness.

Tears were frozen to the book theif’s face.

Mistakes, mistakes, it’s all I seem capable of at times.

There was no more yelling or calling out, but they could not contain the small snatches of laughter. They were only humans, playing in the snow, in a house

When death tells a story yo really have to listen

It kills me sometimes, how people die.

I say His name in a futile attempt to understand. “But it’s not your job to understand.” That’s me who answers. God never says anything. Tou think you’re the only one he never answers?

A couple of them were school beauty-queen pretty while a few were that more real-looking type. A realer kind of pretty.

She kept watching the words.

I don’t want to stand in naked silence, pathetically unaware of how to be.

The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it’s stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun islike a yellow hole. . .

For a good ten minutes or so we stand there with the flashlight burning the grave with light. The whole time, I’m trying to guess where and exactly how he died and, more to the point, realizing that poor old Milla’s been without him for sixty-years. I can tell. No other man has entered her...

Living in Sydney, I’ve taken the chance to start surfing again. One of my best memories of growing up is catching my first proper wave and surfing across it and my brother cheering at me from the shore.

They say that war is death’s best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thin, incessantly: ‘Get it done, get it done.’ So you work harder. You get the...

Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.

I looked at myself in that window, oblivious to all the people around me and I stared and smiled that particular smile. You know that smile that seems to knock you and tell you how pathetic you are? That’s the smile I was smiling.

If your eyes could speak, what would they say?

We are wolves, which are wild dogs, and this is our place in the city. We are small and our house is small on our small urban street. We can see the city and the train line and it’s beautiful in its own dangerous way. Dangerous because it’s shared and taken and fought for.That’s the...

Make sure you live,’ she said. ‘As decent as you can. I know you’ll make mistakes, but sometimes you’re meant to, okay?

The city buildings in the distance are holding up the sky, it seems.