Markus Zusak Quotes - Page 16

I look at her wish we could go inside and make love on the couch. Dive inside each other. Take each other. Make each other. Nothing happens, though.

Warily, she dares to allow me a smile. "It's okay. It's just...I'm not too good at talking to people." She looks away again as her shyness smothers her. "So, do you think it'd be all right if we don't talk?

You can do all manner of underhanded nice things when you have a caustic reputation.

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.

When a person's last response was Saumensch or Saukerl or Arschloch, you knew you had them beaten.

Ed?" Ritchie says later. We're still standing in the water. "There's only one thing I want." "What's that, Ritchie?" His answer is simple. "To want.

She let herself love me for three minutes. Can three minutes last forever? I ask myself, but already know the answer. Probably not, I reply. But maybe they last long enough.

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.

As far as this categorization of books, the way I see it is there are really a hundred-odd categories of books plus one, and on the top shelf at home, I've got the books I love, my favorite books, and that's the type of book that I want to write.

If you ever write a book, I can only give you one piece of advice. Don't let your parents get involved.

Nothing comes naturally to me...I have to work and rework and that's where the ideas come from - from years of working on it and thinking about it.

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

I think, as the writer, you're always going to mourn something [left out of a film]. But you also just want to know there's a good reason for it being left out. On the whole, you want to give something to somebody creative. The worst thing you can do is say, "Here, be creative, but do it like I want you to do it." I was always very mindful of that.

I've been a writer since I was 16. I didn't get published until I was 24. I know that sounds crazy.

I guess if editing doesn't hurt, you're probably not doing it properly. I find it quite difficult. The hardest part is believing that it's actually working and getting rid of the doubt that always creeps in.

I'm having bigger problems when I'm writing.

Personally, I like a chocolate-colored sky, dark, dark chocolate.

I thought what if death is more like thinking, well, war is like the boss at your shoulder, constantly wanting more, wanting more, wanting more, and then that gave me the idea that Death is weary, he's fatigued, and he's haunted by what he sees humans do to each other because he's on hand for all of our great miseries.

As a child in Sydney, my German Mum and my Austrian Dad would spontaneously tell me stories about what they saw and what they did as children. It was like a piece of Europe coming into our house... Those stories led me to my writing.

I see Death as the part of us that knows all the time that we're going to die, reminding us to live properly.

When I find research really rewarding is when one piece of information gives you an idea for a story. That's when it's great.

There are two magic acts I want to pull off when I write. One is creating a feeling that when you're inside a book, you believe everything you're reading even when you know it's not true. And the second is an extension of that, which is you know it's not true, you know it's not real, but you believe it anyway. And it's that believing of the story that isn't real that attracted me to writing and storytelling in general.

I read some books that were the right books for me. I read them and I didn't even notice turning the pages anymore. I thought, "That's what I want to do with my life."

It's insane to be a writer and not be a reader. When I'm writing I'm more likely to be reading four or five books at once, just in bits and pieces rather than subjecting myself to a really brilliant book and thinking, "Well what's the point of me writing anything?" I'm more likely to read a book through when I take a break from writing.