20 minutes later: a girl on Himmel Street. She looks up. She speaks in whisper. 'The sky is soft today, Max. The clouds are so soft and sad, and...' She looks away and crosses her arms. She thinks of her papa going to war and grabs her jacket at each side of her body. 'And it's cold, Max. It's so cold.

I looked at myself in that window, oblivious to all the people around me and I stared and smiled that particular smile. You know that smile that seems to knock you and tell you how pathetic you are? That's the smile I was smiling.

On many counts, taking a boy like Rudy Steiner was robbery--so much life, so much to live for--yet somehow, I'm certain he would have loved to see the frightening rubble and the swelling of the sky on the night he passed away. He'd have cried and turned and smiled if only he could have seen the book thief on her hands and knees, next to his decimated body. He'd have been glad to witness her kissing his dusty, bomb-hit lips. Yes, I know it. In the darkness of my dark-beating heart, I know. He'd have loved it all right. You see? Even death has a heart.

I am hunted by humans.

So much good, so much evil. Just add water.

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.

I think to be writer you have to enjoy being alone. I was a loner as a teenager and was always drawn to characters in books and films who were at the fringes.