The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder. They breathed. German and Jewish lungs.

...they watched the humans disappear. They watched them dissolve, like moving tablets in the humid air.

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 person who's ever belonged to a family. 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.

Maybe one morning I’ll wake up and step outside of myself to look back at the old me lying dead among the sheets.

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.

..As always, she was carrying the washing. Rudy was carrying two buckets of cold water, or as he put it, two buckets of future ice.

You can do all manner of underhanded nice things when you have a caustic reputation.