The point is, Ilsa Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of her, she succumbed to it. She embraced it.

You can do anything when it's not real. When it is real, nothing breaks your fall. Nothing gets between you and the ground.

Somewhere in all the snow, she could see her broken heart, in two pieces.

They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.

A small fact: You are going to die....does this worry you?

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.

I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. 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.