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

The point is, it didn’t really matter what the book was about. It was what it meant that was important.

He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.

I realize that nothing belongs to her anymore and she belongs to everything.

And I can promise you something, because it was a thing I saw many years later - a vision in the book thief herself - that as she knelt next to Hans Hubermann, she watched him stand and play the accordion. He stood and strapped it on in the alps of broken houses and played the accordion with kindness silver eyes and even a cigarette slouched on his lips. The bellows breathed and the tall man played for Liesel Meminger one last time as the sky was slowly taken away from her.

If a guy like you can stand up and do what you did, then maybe everyone can. Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.

You don't shoot a dog when it is already dead.