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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

An eleven-year-old girl is many things, but she is not stupid.

Even death has a heart.

Summer came.For the book thief, everything was going nicely.For me, the sky was the color of Jews.When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had...

Stealing is what the army does. Taking your father, and mine.

He switched off the light, came back and sat in the chair. In the darkness, Liesel kept her eyes open. She was watching the words.

You’re a dead man”. I hear his voice again, and I see the words on my face when I get back in the cab and look in the rearview mirror.It makes me think of my...

She took a step and didn’t want to take any more, but she did.

It is early, early morning. It’s that time when it’s still dark but you know the day is coming. Blue is bleeding through black. Stars are dying.

On June 23, 1942, there was a group of French Jews in a German prison, on Polish soil. The first person I took was close to the door, his mind racing, then reduced to pacing,...

Rudy handed it back. “Speaking of which, I think we’re both slightly in for it when we get home. You especially.””Why me?””You know- your mama.””What about her?” Liesel was exercising the blatant right of every...

A small but noteworthy note. I’ve seen so many young men over the years who think they’re running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.

***A KEY WORD*** Imagined

And when we finally stood up and turned to face the world, I could feel something climbing through me. I could feel it on its hands and knees inside me, rising up, rising up –...

The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.

He was skinny with soft hair, and his thick, murky eyes watched as the stranger played one more song in the heavy room. From face to face, he looked on as the man played and...

You can’t eat books, sweetheart.

The happening that happened was that I met this girl …

I’m not a writer who refuses to talk about a book until I’ve finished.

A halo surrounded the grim reaper nun, Sister Maria. (By the way-I like this human idea of the grim reaper. I like the scythe. It amuses me.)

It feels like the mornings clap their hands.To make me wake.

People observe the colors of a day at its beginnings and ends, but to me it’s quiet clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment.

Ed?” Ritchie says later. We’re still standing in the water. “There’s only one thing I want.””What’s that, Ritchie?”His answer is simple.”To want.

There was an itchy lung for a last cigarette and an immense, magnetic pull toward the basement, for the girl who was his daughter and was writing a book down there he hoped to read...

She didn’t see him watching as he played, having no idea that Hans Hubermann’s accordion was a story. In the times ahead, that story would arrive at 33 Himmel Street in the early hours of...

My mouth opened.It happened.Yes, with my head thrown into the sky, I started howling.Arms stretched out next to me, I howled, and everything came out of me. Visions pored up my throat and past voices...

It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement.

I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.