Markus Zusak

I..." He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the livingroom was open just a crack... I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds." He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months.There was no anger or reproach.It was Papa who spoke.How did it look?"Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. "There were stars," he said. "They burned by eyes.

Papa!_ she whispered. __ have no eyes!__e patted the girl__ hair. She__ fallen into his trap. __ith a smile like that,_ Hans Hubermann said, __ou don__ need eyes.

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.

Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.

Even death has a heart.

Make sure you live,' she said. 'As decent as you can. I know you'll make mistakes, but sometimes you're meant to, okay?

In that one stolen second, I considered the Glebe girl. She entered my mind like a burglar, them vanished again, taking nothing. It was like the humiliation of the past had been dragged instantly from my back and left somewhere on the ground.

The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it's stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun islike a yellow hole. . .

Sometimes people are beautiful.Not in looks.Not in what they say.Just in what they are.

...one opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death.

No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment.

As we walk back, it feels like the city is engulfing us. Adrenalin still pours through our veins. Sparks flow through to our fingers. We've still been running in the mornings, but the city's different then. It's filled with hope and with bristles of winter sunshine. In the evening, it's like it dies, waiting to be born again the next morning.

She looks at the swings, and I can see she__ imagining what they__ look like if the kids weren__ there. The guilt of this holds her down momentarily. It appears to be there constantly. Never far away, despite her love for them.I realize that nothing belongs to her anymore and she belongs to everything.

We used to languish when we walked, or sidle down the street like dogs that have just done something wrong. Now Rube walks upright, because he's on the attack.

I don't really know that this story has a whole lot of things happen in it. It doesn't really. It's just a record of how things were in my life during this last winter. I guess things happened, but nothing out of the ordinary.

She didn't see him watching as he played, having no idea that Hans Hubermann's accordion was a story. In the times ahead, that story would arrive at 33 Himmel Street in the early hours of morning, wearing ruffled shoulders and a shivering jacket. It would carry a suitcase, a book, and two questions. A story. Story after story. Story within story.

There were thousands of households throughout that city and there was something happening in all of them. There was some kind of story in each, but self-contained. No one else knew. No one else cared.

***A KEY WORD*** Imagined