To dive in the darkness, I should dive in the truth, then in images of the world..., then facts, then in books, then listening, then in short stories... That's how I write the horror. It's very complicated.

Let’s put it this way: you know how we always told you that all those years of tormenting four sisters turned you into a closet sadist? Well, if you ever decide that being a lawyer isn’t bringing you the kind of gratification you were hoping for, then I think I found the perfect job for you.

...You do yourself no favour if you let your sense of doubt-mistrust-scepticism to rise up within you to the point where you must look every gift horse in the mouth...

You should give it to Max, Liesel. See if you can leave it on the bedside table, like all the other things.' Liesel watched him as if he'd gone insane. 'How, though?' Lightly, he tapped her skull with his knuckles. 'Memorize it. Then write it down for him.

It is easy and dismally enervating to think of opposition as merely perverse or actually evil-far more invigorating to see it as essential for honing the mind and as a positive good in itself. For the day that moral issues cease to be fought over is the day the word 'human' disappears from the race.