Markus Zusak

The best word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words.

He left Himmel Street wearing his hangover and a suit.

I guess that’s the beauty of books. When they finish they don’t really finish.

People die of broken hearts. They have heart attacks. And it's the heart that hurts most when things go wrong and fall apart.

I watch the beauty for as long as I can, then turn and face the rest of it.

The first couple of times, he simply stayed - a stranger to kill the aloneness. A few nights after that, he whispered “Shhh, I’m here, its alright.” After three weeks, he held her. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man’s gentleness, his thereness.

Our footsteps run, and I don't want them to end. I want to run and laugh and feel like this forever. I want to avoid any awkward moment when the realness of reality sticks its fork into our flesh, leaving us standing there, together. I want to stay here, in this moment, and never go to other places, where we don't know what to say or what to do.

She was a girl with a mountain to climb.

I traveled the globe as always, handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity.

When he moves, a streetlight stabs him, and the words flow out like blood.

Sometimes I just survive. But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.

What would you do if you were me? Tell me. Please tell me! But you're far from this. Your fingers turn the strangeness of these pages that somehow connect my life to yours. Your eyes are safe. The story is just another few hundred pages of your mind. For me, it's here. It's now. I have to go through with this, considering the cost at every turn. Nothing will be the same.

Crowds of questions stream through me like lines of people exiting a soccer ground or a concert. They push and shove and trip. Some make their way around. Some remain in their seats, waiting for their opportunity.

Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or to forget? Do we spend most of our time running towards or away from our lives?

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

It's funny, don't you think, how time seems to do a lot of things? It flies, it tells, and worst of all, it runs out.

***A Last note from your narrator*** I am haunted by humans.

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

I think she ate a salad and some soup. And loneliness. She ate that, too.

The commitment had disappeared, and although he still watched the imagined glory of stealing, she could see now he was not believing. He was trying to believe it, and that’s never a good sign.

There were people everywhere on the city street, but the stranger could not have been more alone if it were empty.