The Book Thief

by Markus Zusak

The book thief and her brother were traveling down toward Munich, where they would soon be given over to foster parents. We now know, of course, that the boy didn’t make it.

With one eye open, one still in a dream, the book thief—also known as Liesel Meminger—could see without question that her younger brother, Werner, was now sideways and dead.

Standing to Liesel’s left, the grave diggers were rubbing their hands together and whining about the snow and the current digging conditions. “So hard getting through all the ice,” and so forth. One of them couldn’t have been more than fourteen. An apprentice. When he walked away, after a few dozen paces, a black book fell innocuously from his coat pocket without his knowledge.

In 1933, 90 percent of Germans showed unflinching support for Adolf Hitler.

Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day. That was the business of hiding a Jew.

She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words.

Disassembled men.

It’s probably fair to say that in all the years of Hitler’s reign, no person was able to serve the Führer as loyally as me. A human doesn’t have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

“It’s such a beautiful day,” he said, and his voice was in many pieces. A great day to die. A great day to die, like this.

“And please,” Ilsa Hermann advised her, “don’t punish yourself, like you said you would. Don’t be like me, Liesel.”

“Don’t punish yourself,” she heard her say again, but there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.

Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes.

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

I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.

I am haunted by humans.

Me too.