Friday, March 8, 2013
Thursday, March 7, 2013
The Book Thief - Pg 527 THE BOOK THIEF PAGE 42
Papa sat with me tonight. He brought the accordion down and sat close to where Max used to sit. I often look at his fingers and face when he plays. The accordion breathes. There are lines on his cheeks. They look drawn on, and for some reason, when I see them, I want to cry. It is not for any sadness or pride. I just like the way they move and change. Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes.
The Book Thief - Pg 521
You bastards, she thought.
You lovely bastards.
Don't make me happy. Please, don't fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this. Look at my bruises. Do you see the graze inside me? Do you see it growing before your very eyes, eroding me? I don't want to hope for anything anymore. I don't want to pray that Max is alive and safe. Or Alex Steiner.
Because the world does not deserve them.
The Book Thief - Pg 521
She had seen her brother die with one eye open, one still in a dream. She had said goodbye to her mother and imagined her lonely wait for a train back home to oblivion. A woman of wire had laid herself down, her scream traveling the street, till it fell sideways like a rolling coin starved of momentum. A young man was hung by a rope made of Stalingrad snow. She had watched a bomber pilot die in a metal case. She had seen a Jewish man who had twice given her the most beautiful pages of her life marched to a concentration camp. And at the center of all of it, she saw the Führer shouting his words and passing them around.
Those images were the world, and it stewed in her as she sat with the lovely books and their manicured titles. it brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words.
The Book Thief - Pg 520
Liesel crossed the bridge over the Amper River. The water was glorious and emerald and rich. She could see the stones at the bottom and hear the familiar song of water. The world did not deserve such a river.
The Book Thief - Pg 518
At first, Liesel could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him? It's likely. 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.
The Book Thief - Pg 469
It was Russia, January 5, 1943, and just another icy day. Out among the city and snow, there were dead Russians and Germans everywhere. Those who remained were firing into the blank pages in front of them. Three languages interwove. The Russian, the bullets, the German.
The Book Thief - Pg 408
He made three separate formations that led to the same tower of dominoes in the middle. Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would all smile at the beauty of destruction.
The Book Thief - Pg 401 DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #8
Nachtrauern -- Regret: Sorrow filled with longing, disappointment, or loss.
The Book Thief - Pg 382 DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #4
Wort -- Word: A meaningful unit of language / a promise
The Book Thief - Pg 381
For at least twenty minutes, she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the crime scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words--their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. Is he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again?
The Book Thief - Pg 381
She didn't dare to look up, but she could feel their frightened eyes hanging on to her as she hauled the words in and breathed them out. A voice played the notes inside of her. This, it said, is your accordion. The sound of the turning page carved them in half. Liesel read on.
The Book Thief - Pg 377
"I..." He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the living room was open just a crack.... I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds." He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months. There was no anger or reproach.
It was Papa who spoke.
"How did it look?"
Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. "There were starts," he said. "They burned my eyes."
The Book Thief - Pg 374
She sang a song, but it was so quiet that Liesel could not make it out. The notes were born on her breath, and they died at her lips.
The Book Thief - Pg 357
Many times, she wanted to ask her papa if he might teach her to play, but somehow, something always stopped her. Perhaps an unknown intuition told her that she would never be able to play it like Hans Hubermann. Surely, not even the world's greatest accordionists could compare. They could never be equal to the casual concentration on Papa's face. Or there wouldn't be a paintwork-traded cigarette slouched on the player's lips. And they could never make a small mistake with a three-note laugh of hindsight. Not the way he could.
The Book Thief - Pg 336
By the time I was finished, the sky was yellow, like burning newspaper. If I looked closely, I could see the words, reporting headlines, commentating on the progress of the war and so forth. How I'd have loved to pull it all down, to screw up the newspaper sky and toss it away. My arms ached and I couldn't afford to burn my fingers. There was still so much work to be done.
The Book Thief - Pg 328
It became her mission. She gave The Dream Carrier to Max as if the words alone could nourish him.
The Book Thief - Pg 313 CHRISTMAS GREETINGS FROM MAX VANDENBURG
"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 hand."
The Book Thief - Pg 303
In truth, I think he was afraid. Rudy Steiner was scared of the book thief's kiss. He must have longed for it so much. 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.
The Book Thief - Pg 259
Grimly, she realized that clocks don't make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave.
The Book Thief - Pg 249
"The sky is blue today, Max, and there is a big long cloud, and it's stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun is like a yellow hole...."
Max, at that moment, knew that only a child could have given him a weather report like that.
The Book Thief - Pg 144
"Saukerl," she laughed, and as she held up her hand, she knew completely that he was simultaneously calling her a Saumensch. I think that's as close to love as eleven-year-olds can get.
The Book Thief - Pg 110
The crowd was itself. There was no swaying it, squeezing through, or reasoning with it. You breathed with it and you sang its songs. You waited for its fire.
The Book Thief - Pg 102
Everything was in place to make April 20 magnificent. It would be a day full of burning and cheering. And book thievery.
The Book Thief - Pg 90
It appeared that there was great joy in cigarettes, and it was a happy time in the Hubermann household.
The Book Thief - Pg 80
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 the rain.
The Book Thief - Pg 80
"Why did he have to die?" she asked, but still, Rudy did nothing, he said nothing. When finally she finished and stood herself up, he put his arm around her, best-buddy style, and they walked on. There was no request for a kiss. Nothing like that. You can love Rudy for that, if you like.
The Book Thief - Pg 79
Oh, how the clouds stumbled in and assembled stupidly in the sky.
Great obese clouds.
Dark and plump.
Bumping into each other. Apologizing. Moving on and finding room.
Great obese clouds.
Dark and plump.
Bumping into each other. Apologizing. Moving on and finding room.
The Book Thief - Pg 72
"You stink," Mama would say to Hans. "Like cigarettes and kerosene." Sitting in the water, she imagined the smell of it, mapped out on her papa's clothes. More than anything, it was the smell of friendship, and she could find it on herself, too. Liesel loved that smell. She would sniff her arm and smile as the water cooled around her.
The Book Thief - Pg 30
When she came to write her story, she would wonder exactly when the books and the words started to mean not just something but everything.
True Things About Me - Pg 148
I felt as if everyone was ignoring me. By mid-afternoon I realised it was probably because I was invisible.
True Things About Me - Pg 131
I tried to pay attention, but nothing was happening. I wasn't sure whether to breathe through my mouth or my nose. Neither felt safe.
True Things About Me - Pg 125
On the front step the grey cat sat upright staring at me. Shoo! Get lost! I shouted, but it didn't move. Its eyes were the colour of pale green grapes. The cat and the sky over the houses were exactly the same colour. Maybe the cat was the evening, come to bless me, help me rest, I thought. No, that couldn't be right.
True Things About Me - Pg 124
Then I began to sense a soft, pink balloon of pure happiness grow in my chest, so I sat down and laughed until it drifted up into my head. This balloon, it was like a barometer, and I knew it showed me things. So I concentrated on the way it moved to fill each hollow and shelf inside my skull, and while that happened I watched the evening lower itself into the garden.
True Things About Me - Pg 107
Who understands what babies see? Maybe everything. Maybe we all start off very wise and far-sighted and end up stupid.
True Things About Me - Pg 101
It seemed as if I'd reached some place - a precipice or something - where I needed to think. What was this problem I had with men? Why couldn't I be a regular girl? But mostly the questions were unaskable. Just long, confused rafts of why? And how? And why not?
True Things About Me - Pg 97
After a while I asked him if he was having a good time; I'd begun to think he might be getting bored. But he didn't answer me. I don't think he heard. I started to feel jumpy and nervous. I had that feeling you get when something is slipping away and you can't stop it. Like the light on a short winter afternoon. I needed something to happen.
True Things About Me - Pg 89
I knew that weeks went by. The calendar said so, but I didn't feel them as days and hours, minutes and seconds. I felt them in my blood maybe, or my bones. I longed to see him. When I woke up in the morning the longing woke up too, like a strange creature on my bed. The feeling moved up from inside my pelvis and settled in my throat. That's where it stayed all day.
True Things About Me - Pg 57
I remember thinking that this was only another Titanic dream; it was OK, and nothing was real.
True Things About Me - Pg 54
Gradually the way I felt about my house when the boy had been there eased off. I didn't feel like I was a visitor in my own home any more: someone who'd come for an interview, say, or for some unpleasant physical examination. It was my own place again. My welcoming, safe place. But now I was beginning to be afraid about how my house could change so quickly; one moment almost shutting me out, and then just as quickly drawing me in again. I didn't feel I could trust it anymore.
True Things About Me - Pg 48
He pushed a square of chocolate into my mouth. It turned to liquid immediately. I seemed to feel him near my heart. There was a buried ache. Baby, he said, you're lovely, aren't you? I don't know how to do this, I said. I thought I would cry.
True Things About Me - Pg 41
All through the film his eyebrows hardly moved, but I could tell when he was upset. As I watched I drank the wine and ate the cheese. It felt like a ritual. As he was taken off to prison, unjustly accused of her murder, I raised my glass to him. Good luck, my darling, I said.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 477
Tonight, for the first time, Tessa was convinced that it was a lie, and also that everything she had done in her life, telling herself that it was for the best, had been no more than blind selfishness, generating confusion and mess all around. But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky, could anybody stand to know that they all were?
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 434
In the Smithy, a few miles outside Pagford, Gavin Hughes soaped himself under a hot shower and wondered why he had never had the courage of other men, and how they managed to make the right choices among almost infinite alternatives. There was a yearning inside him for a life he had glimpsed but never tasted, yet he was afraid. Choice was dangerous: you had to forgo all other possibilities when you chose.
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 426
They laughed because of Howard and Maureen's duet, and because they had finished two-thirds of the vodka, but mostly they laughed because they laughed, feeding off each other until they could barely stand.
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 316
The habit of secrecy was very strong in her these days. She was actively frightened of imparting confidences, because she feared that they might betray the world of oddness that lived inside her.
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 272
Ever since Barry's funeral, Gavin had dwelled, with a sense of deep inadequacy, on the comparatively small gap that he was sure he would leave behind in his community, should he die. Looking at Mary, he wondered whether it would not be better to leave a huge hole in one person's heart.
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 229
She watched the stream of hot black liquid fall, and felt suddenly, painfully alive to what she had risked in overthrowing her life for the man walking away into the night with another woman.
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 188
It was so good to be held. If only their relationship could be distilled into simple, wordless gestures of comfort. Why had humans ever learned to talk?
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 179
Still the rain fell, forcing the sign painter who had been hired to rename the old shoe shop to postpone the job. It poured for days and into the nights, and the Square was full of hunchbacks in waterproofs, and umbrellas collided on the narrow pavement.
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 175
"Yeah," said Fats. "Fucking and dying. That's it, innit? Fucking and dying. That's life."
"Trying to get a fuck and trying not to die."
"Or trying to die," said Fats. "Some people. Risking it."
"Yeah. Risking it."
There was more silence, and their hiding place was cool and hazy.
"And music," said Andrew quietly, watching the blue smoke hanging beneath the dark rock.
"Yeah," said Fats, in the distance. "And music."
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 173
Andrew inhaled and felt the power of the drug radiate out from his lungs, unwinding and loosening him. Another drag, and he thought that it was like having your mind shaken out like a duvet, so that it resettled without creases, so that everything became smooth and simple and easy and good.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 170
Certain chord changes, certain beats, made the very core of him shiver, and so did something about Gaia Bawden.
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 168
It was only Gaia who had ever made him wonder this: the idea of body and soul as separate entities had never once occurred to him until he had clapped eyes on her. Even while trying to imagine what her breasts would look and feel like, judged by the visual evidence he had managed to gather through a slightly translucent school shirt, and what he knew was a white bra, he could not believe that the allure she held for him was exclusively physical. She had a way of moving that moved him as much as music, which was what moved him most of all. Surely the spirit animating that peerless body must be unusual too? Why would nature make a vessel like that, if not to contain something still more valuable?
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 76
He wanted to journey through dark labyrinths and wrestle with the strangeness that lurked within; he wanted to crack open piety and expose hypocrisy; he wanted to break taboos and squeeze wisdom from their bloody hearts; he wanted to achieve a state of amoral grace, and be baptized backwards into ignorance and simplicity.
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 75
He spent hours interrogating himself about his own impulses, desires and fears, attempting to discriminate between those that were truly his and those that he had been taught to feel.
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 74
Lately, he had been experimenting with acting on what he thought were his authentic impulses, and ignoring or suppressing the guilt and fear (inauthentic) that such actions seemed to engender. Undoubtedly, this was becoming easier with practice. He wanted to toughen up inside, to become invulnerable, to be free of the fear of consequences: to rid himself of spurious notions of goodness and badness.
The Casual Vacancy - Pg 74
The difficult thing, the glorious thing, was to be who you really were, even if that person was cruel or dangerous, particularly if cruel and dangerous. There was courage in not disguising the animal you happened to be.
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