The Book Thief Death Quotes

These are lines from The Standover Man, Max's loving gift to Liesel after she hugs him on his birthday. The hug, at that point, is more out of pity than love. But, The Standover Man changes all that.

Though we don't know it until the end of the novel, that boy is Rudy. By this time in the novel, he's dedicated himself to acts of kindness and love, small and large. Ironically, a plane like the one he sees crashed here, with its pilot barely alive, is like the one that will drop a bomb on Himmel Street, ending Rudy's life.

We understand it too. The novel seems to argue that it's easy to be loving, when we take the time to see the worth in those around it. Of course, Hans makes this really easy.

Liesel does change her tune, but doesn't reveal the change to Rudy, until it's too late. The fact that she never kisses Rudy when he's alive will haunt Liesel for a long time to come.

Rudy's premature death keeps Liesel and Rudy from ever truly discovering whether their love is confined to friendship, or whether it extends into the romantic realm. We are sure it's a romantic love for Rudy, at least in his imagination, but he's only fourteen, with much more to learn and see and grow.

This is a moment from the end of the novel, when Max and Liesel reunite. We don't know what happens to their relationship after this, but we can be sure it has lots to do with love.

By the end of the novel, Liesel does have a career – in reading the books she steals. She wins the love of fellow Himmel Streeters by reading to them during the air raids and expresses her love for Max by reading to him when he's in a coma. When she reads to Frau Holtzapfel, she actually earns flour and coffee for Rosa.

This is important to note, in terms of Liesel's growth and change throughout the novel.

Liesel and Hans trade sleep for reading and writing, and the pleasure of one another's company. These activities help forge the tight bond between them.

Liesel's love for books is very apparent in this moment, after she's stolen the smoldering The Shoulder Shrug from the book burning. She'd rather let it burn her skin than abandon it.

This is Liesel's first glimpse of Ilsa Hermann's library. Maybe we take our libraries for granted these days. Though, still, doesn't the sight of a library fill you with a little of Liesel's wonder? No matter how common place the library may be?

This is Max, writing in his scrap book, expressing how it felt to see the stars for the first time since he's come to Himmel Street. In fact, he hasn't seen anything of the outside world. The passage is an intense expression of his confined state.

Liesel is becoming "the word shaker." She's finding ways to use words for good, like here, when she comforts the people in the bomb shelter by reading to them.

In this moment, Liesel is so disillusioned with the words that she tears up a book. What do you think about her statement, though. Is it true that Hitler needed words to do what he did?

Bet you didn't know souls had fingers. But the point is that Liesel is reunited with her book in the afterlife, when it's almost disintegrated. It makes us wonder if Liesel wrote more books after she left Himmel Street. What do you think?

This early passage describes the sky over Himmel Street when it's bombed in 1942. Have you ever seen a bomb-filled sky? How do you feel about Death's soup analogy?

This passage refers to Hitler's invasion of Poland and Liesel's bad day in school, where she's beaten multiple times by her teacher and then beats up two other kids herself. Do you ever feel like you're in war, in battle when you are at school?

Here we see Liesel moments after she's declared war on Hitler himself. Her way of fighting him has to do with rescuing at least one of the many books he's burned.

This is Death, giving us the death toll of World War II and the Holocaust. First, how do you check his figure for accuracy? Second, how do we process death on this scale? How can we deal with it? Think about it? Talk about it?

Max is fighting a war for his own survival. It's taken much of his humor from him. Yet, he manages to laugh and make others laugh, in spite of his plight.