***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.

Death waits for no man – and if he does, he doesn’t usually wait for very long.

So many people chased after me in that time, calling my name, asking me to take them with me. Then there was the small percentage who called me casually over and whispered with their tightend...

If her soul ever leaks, I want it to land on me.

Often I wish this would all be over, Liesel, but then somehow you do something like walk down the basement steps with a snowman in your hands.

sometimes the human race likes to crank things up a little. They increase the production of bodies and their escaping souls.

The city was dark except for the building lights that seemed to appear like sores – like bandaids had been ripped off to expose the city’s skin.

And you’re Cameron Wolfe. That’ gotta start meaning somethin’ boy. That’s gotta start churnin’ inside us, making us wanna be someone for those names, and not just another couple of guys who amounted to nothin’...

In truth, I think he was afraid. Rudy Steiner was scared of the book thief’s kiss. He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So that he...