I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that night, excluding the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the advice, my imagined feet walking into the kitchen and down the corridor.

Please, trust me, I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.

Better that we leave the paint behind," Hans told her, "than ever forget the music.

Stealing it, in a sick kind of sense, was like earning it.

The best word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest.

… it was raining on Himmel Street when the world ended for Liesel Meminger. The sky was dripping. Like a tap that a child has tried its hardest to turn off but hasn’t quite managed.