The word maybe was beginning to annoy me, because the only thing that was fixed was that maybe would be with me forever.

Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.

Best friends one, and now we have almost nothing to say to each other. It was interesting, how he had joined those guys and I just stayed on my own. I didn’t like it or...

Son, you can’t go around painting yourself black, you hear?” “Why not, Papa?” “Because they’ll take you away.” “Why?” “Because you shouldn’t want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is…not...

It feels like spoken words, this bridge. I want it but fear it. God, I want so desperately to reach the other side – just like I want the words. I want my words to...

The thing is, I don’t even hate cops. To tell you the truth, I actually feel a little sorry for them.

Whoever named Himmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that is was a living hell. It wasn’t. But is sure as hell wasn’t heaven, either.

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it’s getting harder because I want to improve with every book.

He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.

for some reason, dying men always ask the question they know the answer to. perhaps it’s so they can die being right.

When finally she finished and stood herself up, he put his arm around her, best-buddy style, and they walked on. There was no request for a kiss. Nothing like that. You can love Rudy for...

Disbelief held me down inside my footsteps, making my body heavy but my heart wild.

Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.

He was waving. “Saukerl,” she laughed, and as she held up her hand, she knew completely that he was simultaneously calling her a Saumensch. I think that’s as close to love as eleven-year-olds can get.

Right. That’s twenty-two fifty.””Twenty-two fifty?” We can’t hide our exasperation.”Well, yeah – this is a classy joint, you know.””That’s obvious – the service is incredible.

If someone wanted to be a runner, you don’t tell them to think about running, you tell them to run. And the same simple idea applies to writing, I hope.

The dog next-door had settled down, and the neighbourhood seemed stunned by this event occurring in our backyard. It was like it could sense it. It could sense some form of tragedy and helplessness being...

She looks at the swings, and I can see she’s imagining what they’d look like if the kids weren’t there. The guilt of this holds her down momentarily. It appears to be there constantly. Never...

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.

My arms are killing me. I didn’t know words could be so heavy.

I feel the fear, but I walk fast toward it.

Sure. God knows what’s important.

I wanted to drown inside a woman in the feeling and drooling of the love I could give her. I wanted her pulse to crush me with its intensity. That’s what I wanted. That’s what...

Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment.’There were stars,’ He said. ‘They burned my eyes.’…from a Himmel street window, he wrote, the stars set fire to my eyes.

Every time you find something that doesn’t work, you’re a step closer to what does work.

It’s pathetic how a man can stand by and do nothing as a whole nation cleans out the garbage and makes itself great”-Hans Junior

I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race – that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so...

…there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.

She wanted none of those days to end, and it was always with disappointment that she watched the darkness stride forward.

At first, all is black and white.Black on white.That’s where I’m walking, through pages.These pages.Sometimes it gets so that I have one foot in the pages and the words, and the other in what they...

You know,’ she begins, ‘you fellas ought to be looking after each other.’ Her comment makes me realise that through the lies, the greatest irony is that we are looking out for each other. It’s...

In that one stolen second, I considered the Glebe girl. She entered my mind like a burglar, them vanished again, taking nothing. It was like the humiliation of the past had been dragged instantly from...

Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.

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.

A DEFINITION NOT FOUNDIN THE DICTIONARYNot leaving: an act of trust and love,often deciphered by children

Grimly, she realized that clocks don’t make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of...

Steve, on the other hand, has plenty of friends, but he wouldn’t bleed for any of them, because he wouldn’t trust them to bleed for him. In that way he’s just as alone as me.

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.

All my friends seem to be smart arses. Don’t ask me why. Like many things, it is what it is.

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.

I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair and surprise.

Something I’d like to be perfect at? … Loving you,’ I said. The words climbed from my mouth. ‘I’d want to be perfect at loving you.

If you can’t imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.

There are so many moments to remember and sometimes I think that maybe we’re not really people at all. Maybe moments are what we are…. Sometimes I just survive. But sometimes I stand on the...

The scribbled signature black, onto the blinding global white, onto the thick soupy red.

The book thief has struck for the first time – the beginning of an illustrious career.

That paper–it sits there, open at the employment section. It sits there like a war, and each small advertisement is another trench for a person to dive into. To hope and fight in.

I’ve wandered through the real world, and written myself through the darkness of the streets inside me. I see people walking through the city and wonder where they’ve been, and what the moments of their...

If I ever leave this place-I’ll make sure I’m better HERE first.