Quotes from Getting the Girl

“There are so many moments to remember and sometimes I think that maybe we're not really people at all. Maybe moments are what we are.... Sometimes I just survive. But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it - when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“Sometimes I just survive.
But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“Things always seem to glide away.
They come to you, stay a moment, then leave again.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“You can do anything when it's not real.
When it is real, nothing breaks your fall. Nothing gets between you and the ground.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“I've wandered through the real world, and written myself through the darkness of the streets inside me. I see people walking through the city and wonder where they've been, and what the moments of their lives have done to them. If they're anything like me, their moments have held them up and shot them down.
Sometimes I just survive.
But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.
That's when the stories show up in me.
They find me all the time.
They're made of underdogs and fighters. They're made of hunger and desire and trying to live decent.
The only trouble is, I don't know which of those stories comes first.
Maybe they all just merge into one.
We'll see, I guess.
I'll let you know when I decide.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“If her soul ever leaks, I want it to land on me.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“I wanted to drown inside a woman in the feeling and drooling of the love I could give her. I wanted her pulse to crush me with its intensity. That's what I wanted. That's what I wanted myself to be.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“Something I'd like to be perfect at? ... Loving you,' I said. The words climbed from my mouth. 'I'd want to be perfect at loving you.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“Disbelief held me down inside my footsteps, making my body heavy but my heart wild.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“I guess when someone tells you something they they usually guard, you feel privileged, not because you know something no-one else knows, but because you feel chosen. You feel like that person wants her life to intersect with yours. I think that's what felt best about it.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“I'd seen glimpses of a different me. It was a different me because in those increments of time I thought I actually became a winner.
The truth, however, is painful.
It was a truth that told me with a scratching internal brutality that I was me, and that winning wan't natural for me. It had to be fought for, in the echoes and trodden footprints of my mind. In a way, I had to scavenge for moments of alrightness.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“Shadows of cloud lurked in the water, like holes the sun forgot about.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“It feels like spoken words, this bridge. I want it but fear it. God, I want so desperately to reach the other side - just like I want the words. I want my words to build bridges strong enough to walk on. I want them to tower over the world so I can stand up on them and walk to the other side.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“For a moment, I debated whether I should tell someone about the words I'd started writing down, but I couldn't. In a way, I felt ashamed, even though my writing was the one thing that whispered okayness in my ear. I didn't speak it, to anyone.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“I s'pose, I can't have it all my own way, can I? You can't drown in a person unless they let you.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“You ever hear a dog cry, Steve? You know, howling so loud it's almost unbearable?' He nodded. 'I reckon they howl like that because they're so hungry it hurts, and that's what I feel in me every day of my life. I'm so hungry to be somethin' - to be somebody. You hear me?' He did. 'I'm not lyin' down ever. Not for you. Not for anyone.' I ended it. 'I'm hungry, Steve.'
Sometimes I think they're the best words I've ever said.
'I'm hungry.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“Make sure you live,' she said. 'As decent as you can. I know you'll make mistakes, but sometimes you're meant to, okay?”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“As I make my way through, I feel okayness reaching through me.
The funny thing is that okayness is not a real word. It's not in the dictionary.
But it's in me.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“And when we finally stood up and turned to face the world, I could feel something climbing through me. I could feel it on its hands and knees inside me, rising up, rising up - and I smiled.
I smiled, thinking, The hunger, because I knew it all too well.
The hunger.
The desire.
Then, slowly, as we walked on, I felt the beauty of it, and I could taste it, like words inside my mouth.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“What is it about the sound of clapping hands? Why does it seem like an ocean of sound, breaking like waves on top of you? Why does it make a tide turn in you? Maybe it’s because it’s one of the most noble things humans do with their hands. I mean, humans make fists with their hands. They use them to hurt each other and steal things. When humans clap, it’s the one time they stand together and applaud other humans. I think they’re there to keep things. They hold moments together, to remember.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“He was tall and abrupt and exactly the kind of guy you wanted to be walking the streets with.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“I told her I loved the howling sound of her harmonica. That seemed to be the limit of my courage that night, and even those spoken words had to struggle their way out of my mouth. It's all very well for words to build bridges, but sometimes I think it's a matter of knowing when to do it. Knowing when the time's right.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“The Charcoal Sky

Sometimes you go to the wrong place, but the right way comes and finds you. It might make you trip over it or speak to it. Or it might come to you when a day is stripped apart by night and ask you to take its hand and forget this wrong place, this illusion where you stand.

I think of this mess in my mind and the girl who walked through it to stand before me and let her voice come close.

I remember brick walls.

There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it - when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were.

It calls your name, but you're gone.
You hear nothing. See nothing.
You've gone somewhere else. You've gone somewhere to find a different definition of yourself, and it's a place where nothing else can touch you. Nothing else can swing on your thoughts. It's only yourself, flat against the charcoal sky, for one moment.

Then flat on the earth again, where the world doesn't recognize you anymore. Your name is what it always was. You look and sound like you always did, yet you're not the same, and when a city wind begins to call you, it's voice doesn't only hit the edges.

It connects.

It blows into you rather than in spite of you.

Sometimes you feel like it's calling out for you.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“I tell me:

Let these words be footsteps, because I have a long way to travel. Let the words walk the dirty streets. Let them make their way across the crying grass. Let them stand and breathe and pant smoke in winter evenings. And when they're tired and have fallen down, let them buckle to their feet ad arc around me, watchful.

I want these words to be actions.

Give them flesh and bones, I say to me, and eyes of hunger and desire, so they can write and fight me through the night.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“We expressed love for this dog by ... knowing without showing that we cared for him.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“I could smell something. Fear.
I could taste it now.
It tasted like blood in my mouth, and I could feel it slide through me and open me up when I saw him ...”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“But for now, happiness throws stones.
It guards itself.
I wait.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

“I think only one thing.

Where 's Octavia?

As I get closer to the bottom, I notice that it's water that I'm falling into. It's salty-green and smooth, until...

I'm driven through the surface and go deeper. I'm surrounded.

I'm drowning. I think. I'm drowning.

But I'm smiling too.”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Getting the Girl

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“Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct.”
― Adam Smith, quote from The Theory of Moral Sentiments

“Our own attitude is that we are charged with discovering the best way of doing everything.”
― Mark Graban, quote from Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction

“As for the rest of him, his function is rather like that of an anti-computer: you feed him all kinds of carefully garnered facts, figures, and statistics and he translates them into garbage.”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from This Immortal

“When asked about it, Harvey called it his Occam’s razor theory of combat: The simplest way of kicking someone’s ass was usually the correct one.”
― John Scalzi, quote from The Ghost Brigades

“It seemed to me that a solution must be found. Here, my natural optimism was to my advantage. For when I read Sartre or Camus or Graham Greene, I experienced a temperamental rejection of their pessimism. I suspected that their ultimate picture might be distorted by a certain self-pity or lack of discipline—or, in the case of Greene, by a certain congenital lack of vitality. I suspected that if the problem left them defeated, it was because they had not attacked it hard enough.”
― Colin Wilson, quote from The Outsider

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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.

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