The beauty of my work is that my sets cost nothing. That's what I love about being a writer of novels.

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

They'd been standing like that for thirty seconds of forever.

And then there's the sickness I feel from looking at legs I can't touch, or at lips that don't smile at me. Or hips that don't reach for me. And hearts that don't beat for me.

Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes.

Even death has a heart.

For at least twenty minutes she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words--their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. It he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again?