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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Failure has been my best friend as a writer. It tests you, to see if you have what it takes to see it through.

I love the laughter of this night. Our footsteps run, and I don’t want them to end. I want to run and laugh and feel like this forever. I want to avoid any awkward moment...

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.

The impoverished always try to keep moving, as if relocating might help. They ignore the reality that a new version of the same old problem will be waiting at the end of the trip- the...

I had many boxing matches with my brother in the backyard when we were younger, and I guess while other people abhor boxing for its brutality, I also have to admire anyone who climbs into...

On many counts, taking a boy like Rudy Steiner was robbery–so much life, so much to live for–yet somehow, I’m certain he would have loved to see the frightening rubble and the swelling of the...

That’s typically what writers do; we just sit around complaining most of the time. And the better things are going, the more they complain.

It’s much easier . . . to be on the verge of something than to actually be it. This would still take time.

They’re brainless girls, otherwise they wouldn’t be seen dead here. They’re pretty, with ugly, appealing smiles and conversations we can’t hear. They breathe smoke and blow it out, and words drop from their mouths and...

It feels nice to emerge from the lies.

It could be worse. I could be you.

I am haunted by humans.

If nothing else, they died fast and they were warm. The boy from the plane, I thought. The one with the teddy bear. Where was Rudy’s confort? Where was someone to alleviate this robbery of...

She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Leisel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows...

And it would show me, once again, that one opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death.

I could smell something. Fear.I could taste it now.It tasted like blood in my mouth, and I could feel it slide through me and open me up when I saw him …