Markus Zusak

You__l have days of complete lack of faith in your abilities. But you have to keep coming back. That__ when you know you__e a writer _ when you take the failures and appear at the desk again, over and over again.

The impoverished always try to keep moving, as if relocating might help.

I've wandered through the real world, and written myself through the darkness of the streets inside me. I see people walking through the city and wonder where they've been, and what the moments of their lives have done to them. If they're anything like me, their moments have held them up and shot them down.Sometimes I just survive.But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.That's when the stories show up in me.They find me all the time.They're made of underdogs and fighters. They're made of hunger and desire and trying to live decent.The only trouble is, I don't know which of those stories comes first.Maybe they all just merge into one.We'll see, I guess.I'll let you know when I decide.

a young man was hung by a rope made of Stalingrad snow

It would then be brought abruptly to an end, for the brightness had shown suffering the way.

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.

Keep going. You're a mess and you're happy.

When I picked him up originally, the boy's spirit was soft and cold, like ice-cream. He started melting in my arms. Then warming up completely. Healing.

Steve, on the other hand, has plenty of friends, but he wouldn't bleed for any of them, because he wouldn't trust them to bleed for him. In that way he's just as alone as me.

A GUIDED TOUR OF SUFFERING: To your left, perhaps your right, perhaps even straight ahead, you find a small black room. In it sits a Jew. He is scum. He is starving. He is afraid. Please - try not to look away.

She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Leisel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist's suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers...She did not say goodbye. She was incapable, and after a few more minutes at his side, she was able to tear herself from the ground. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on...

Have you ever noticed that idiots have a lot of friends? It's just an observation.

See, I was never a guy who had a whole heap of friends to belong to. Besides Greg Fienni, I never really had friends. I kind of stayed on my own. I hated it, but I was proud of it too. Cameron Wolfe needed no one. He didn't need to be amongst a pack. Not all of us roam like that. No, all he needed was his instincts. All he needed was himself.

All my friends seem to be smart arses. Don't ask me why. Like many things, it is what it is.

You're a dead man". I hear his voice again, and I see the words on my face when I get back in the cab and look in the rearview mirror.It makes me think of my life, my nonexistent accomplishments and my overall abilities in incompetence."A dead man", I think. He's not far wrong.

She was like a lone angel floating above the surface of the earth, laughing with delight because she could fly but crying out of loneliness.

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.

It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.