Set in the small town of Molching, Germany, during World War II, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is the coming-of-age story of Liesel Meminger, an orphan girl who recently lost her only brother. Death is the novel’s omniscient narrator, which provides an unusual perspective on Hitler’s actions and the Holocaust. Liesel is sent to live with foster parents, the kind Hans Hubermann and his stern wife, Rosa. Seeking comfort from grief and the turmoil and brutalities around her, she turns to stealing books–even though (at first) she can’t read them. She shares her books and other treasures with Rudy Steiner, the young neighbor and classmate who later becomes her best friend, and Max Vandenburg, a Jewish man Hans offers to hide in their basement.

Along with affirming the power of reading to foster empathy, The Book Thief explores the human capacity for both exceptional kindness and staggering cruelty. This collection of 40+ quotes captures why this historical novel remains relevant to our times and deeply affecting.

On words and their power

• "I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life."

• "You can't eat books, sweetheart."

• "The words. They are all that I have."

• "As always, one of her books was next to her."

• "She was the book thief without the words. Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain."

• "I like that every page in every book can have a gem on it."

• "Words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around. They're the best moments in a day of writing—when an image appears that you didn't know would be there when you started work in the morning."

• "The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this."

• "I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right."

On love and connection

• "A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship."

• "The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you."

• "He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So hard that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them."

• “Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.”

• "Restricted as she was from speaking, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to drag her hand across and pull her over. It didn't matter where. Her mouth, her neck, her cheek. Her skin was empty for it, waiting."

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

• "You are what you love, not what loves you."

On the duality of human nature

• "I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant."

• "I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate."

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

• "I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race—that rarely do I ever simply estimate it." 

• "Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me."

• "I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me."  

• "Usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. 'I'm okay' we say. 'I'm alright'. But sometimes the truth arrives on you and you can't get it off."

• "I guess humans are a lot like that. They can be beautiful and ugly at the same time."

• "I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know?”

• "Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction."

On death and mortality (from Death's perspective)

• His soul sat up. It met me."

• "Even death has a heart."

• "Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die."

• "A human doesn't have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time."

• "It kills me sometimes, how people die."

• “One opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death."

• "If they killed him tonight, at least he would die alive."

On the human capacity for resilience and hope

• "Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day."

• "Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness."

• “It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on.”

• "He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It's his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry."

• "She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did."

• "She wanted none of those days to end, and it was always with disappointment that she watched the darkness stride forward."

• "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 was a Monday and they walked on a tightrope to the sun."

• "She was saying goodbye and she didn't even know it."

• "A single hour can consist of thousands of different colors."

• "It's hard to not like a man who not only notices the colors, but speaks them."