Quotes from Fighting Ruben Wolfe

Markus Zusak ·  224 pages

Rating: (3.4K votes)


“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.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“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?”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“But neither of us knows, because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“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.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“It makes me wonder, Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or forget things? Do we spend most of our time running towards or away from our lives? I don't know.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe



“The city buildings in the distance are holding up the sky, it seems.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“A fighter can be a winner, but that doesn't make a winner a fighter.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“I'm gonna hunt my life down and grab it.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“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.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“... because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it. It's the ones in between that test you. They're the ones that bring questions with them.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe



“See, Cameron. The only things I care about in this life are me, you, Mum, Dad, Steve and Sarah. And maybe Miffy. The rest of the world means nothing to me. The rest of the world can rot.'
Am I like that too?'
You? No way.' There's a slight gap in his words. 'And that's your problem. You care about everything.'
He's right.
I do.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“I just know that right now, we want to be proud. For once. We want to take the struggle and rise above it. We want to frame it, live it, survive it. We want to put it in our mouths and taste it and never forget it, because it makes us strong.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“We are wolves, which are wild dogs, and this is our place in the city. We are small and our house is small on our small urban street. We can see the city and the train line and it's beautiful in its own dangerous way. Dangerous because it's shared and taken and fought for.
That's the best way I can put it, and thinking about it, when I walk past the tiny houses on our street, I wonder about the stories inside them. I wonder hard, because houses must have walls and rooftops for a reason. My only query is the windows. Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out?”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“I say, 'Don't lose your heart, Rube.'
And very clearly, without moving, my brother answers me.
He says, 'I'm not tryin' to lose it, Cam. I'm tryin' to find it.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“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.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe



“Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of dark corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“Time will tell, I suppose, or at least, these pages will.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“But neither of us knows, because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the beginning that you're going to win. It's the ones in between that test you. They're the ones that bring questions with them.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“The only people we want to blame are ourselves, because it will be ourselves that we rely upon.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“It's the sound of my breathing that gets me, pouring down into my lungs and then tripping back up my throat.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe



“How'd it feel?" Rube asked himself. "I don't know exactly, but it made me want to howl.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“They're brainless girls, otherwise they wouldn't be seen dead here. They're pretty, with ugly, appealing smiles and conversations we can't hear. They breathe smoke and blow it out, and words drop from their mouths and get crushed to the floor. Or they get discarded, just to glow with warmth for a moment, for someone else to tread on later.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“He's been to the brink and come back. I guess when you lose your pride, even for just a moment, you realise how much it means to you.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“When I’m there, Rube’s eyes fire into mine. Make sure you get up, they tell me, and I nod, then jump up. The jacket’s off. My skin’s warm. My wolfish hair sticks up as always, nice and thick. I’m ready now. I’m ready to keep standing up, no matter what, I’m ready to believe that I welcome the pain and that I want it so much that I will look for it. I will seek it out. I’ll run to it and throw myself into it. I’ll stand in front of it in blind terror and let it beat me down and down till my courage hangs off me in rags. Then it will dismantle me and stand me up naked, beat me some more and my slaughter-blood will fly from my mouth and the pain will drink it, feel it, steal it and conceal it in the pockets of its guts and it will taste me. It will just keep standing me up, and I won’t let it know. I won’t tell it that I feel it. I won’t give it the satisfaction. No, the pain will have to kill me.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“We smell the impact of traffic and humans. Humans and traffic. Back and forth. We taste our moment, swallowing it, knowing it. We feel our nerves twitching inside our stomaches, lunging at our skin from beneath.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe



“Around us I can sniff out a savagery in the noisy southern air. It knifes it's way into my nose, but I do not bleed blood. It's fear I bleed, and it gushes out over my lip. I wipe it away, in a hurry.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“Our own place is mall perhaps, but when your old man is eaten by his own shadow, you realise that maybe in every house, something so savage and sad and brilliant is standing up, without the world even seeing it.
Maybe that's what these pages of words are about:
Bringing the world to the window.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? Our own place is small perhaps, but when your old man is eaten up by his own shadow, you realize maybe that in every house, something so savage and sad and brilliant is standing up, without the world even seeing it.
Maybe that's what these pages of words are about.
Bringing the world to the window.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


“The thing is, I don't even hate cops. To tell you the truth, I actually feel a little sorry for them.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe


About the author

Markus Zusak
Born place: in Sydney, Australia
Born date June 23, 1975
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
― A.A. Milne, quote from The World of Winnie-the-Pooh


“Christopher . . . are these from you?” she asked at lunch, careful to make her tone light as she placed the two picture-poems on the table. Christopher’s eyes fell to them, and he smiled.
“Yes.”
He didn’t ask if she liked them, and he didn’t seem embarrassed.
Sarah was flustered, and somewhat surprised by Christopher’s easy confidence. Even so, her natural suspicion surfaced. “Why?”
“Because,” he answered seriously, “you make a good subject. Your hair, for one, is like a shimmering waterfall. It’s so fair that it catches the light. It makes you seem like you have a halo about you. And your eyes—they’re such a pure color, not washed out at all, deep as the ocean. And your expression . . . intense and yet somehow detached, as if you see more of the world than the rest of us.”
Flustered, she could think of no way to respond. Did he just say this stuff from the top of his head? Only her strict Vida control kept her from blushing.
Meanwhile Nissa entered the cafeteria. She started to sit, then glanced from the pictures, to Christopher, to Sarah. “Should I go somewhere else?”
Christopher nodded to a chair, answering easily, “Sit down. We aren’t exchanging dark secrets—yet.”
Nissa flashed a teasing look to her brother as she took a seat. “As his sister, I feel the need to inform you, Sarah, that Christopher has been talking about you incessantly.”
Christopher smiled, unembarrassed. “I suppose I might have been.’
“Especially your eyes—he never shuts up about your eyes,” Nissa confided, and this time Christopher shrugged.
“They’re beautiful,” he said casually. “Beauty should be looked at, not ignored. I try to capture it on paper, but that’s really impossible with eyes, because they have a life no still portrait can capture.”
Sarah’s voice was tied up so tightly she thought she might be able to speak again sometime next year. No one had ever talked about her—or to her—with such admiration.”
― Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, quote from Shattered Mirror


“Truly being able to see the needs of others around you, that is a rare gift. Only when you embrace it will you start to learn who you are, and begin going after what you really want.”
― Wendy Mass, quote from Finally


“Sevro." I lean forward. "Your eyes..."
He leans in close. "Do you like 'em?"
"Bloodydamn. Did you get Carved?"
"By the best in the business. Do you like 'em?"
"They're bloodydamn marvelous. Fit you like a glove."
He punches his hands together. "Glad you said that. Cuz they're yours."
I blanch. "What?"
"They're yours."
"My what?"
"Your eyes!"
"My eyes..."
"Do you want the eyes back?" Sevro asks, suddenly worried. "I can give them back."
"No!" I say. "It's just I forgot how crazy you are."
"Oh." He laughs and slaps my shoulder. "Good. I thought it might be something serious. So I'm prime keeping them?"
"Finders keepers," I say with a shrug.”
― Pierce Brown, quote from Morning Star


“I understand that you believe that it works,' said Thrower patiently. 'But everything in the world is either science or miracles. Miracles came from God in the ancient times, but those times are over. Today if we wish to change the world, it isn't magic but science that will give us our tools.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Seventh Son


Interesting books

The Ring of Solomon
(23.3K)
The Ring of Solomon
by Jonathan Stroud
Small Island
(20.9K)
Small Island
by Andrea Levy
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away
(51.1K)
I'm a Stranger Here...
by Bill Bryson
Red Mars
(53.6K)
Red Mars
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Escape from Freedom
(7.7K)
Escape from Freedom
by Erich Fromm
Crashed
(36.4K)
Crashed
by K. Bromberg

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.