Page 493 - The Book Thief

You lovely bastards.

Dont make me happy. Please, dont fill me up and let me think that something
good can come of any of this. Look at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see
the graze inside me? Do you see it growing before your very eyes, eroding me? I
dont want to hope for anything anymore. I dont want to pray that Max is alive
and safe. Or Alex Steiner.

Because the world does not deserve them.

She tore a page from the book and ripped it in half.

Then a chapter.

Soon, there was nothing but scraps of words littered between her legs and all
around her. The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there
wouldnt be any of this. Without words, the Fhrer was nothing. There would be

no limping prisoners, no need for consolation or wordly tricks to make us feel
better.

What good were the words?

She said it audibly now, to the orange-lit room. What good are the words?

The book thief stood and walked carefully to the library door. Its protest was
small and halfhearted. The airy hallway was steeped in wooden emptiness.

Frau Hermann?

The question came back at her and tried for another surge to the front door. It

made it only halfway, landing weakly on a couple of fat floorboards.

Frau Hermann?

The calls were greeted with nothing but silence, and she was tempted to seek out
the kitchen, for Rudy. She refrained. It wouldnt have felt right to steal food from
a woman who had left her a dictionary against a windowpane. That, and she had
also just destroyed one of her books, page by page, chapter by chapter. Shed
done enough damage as it was.