Significant+Quotes

There were many significant quotes in this book. One of the Motifs is the concept of words. With the holocaust going on behind the story, Liesel learns a lot about Hitler and his use of words. With this quote out of the book that Max made to her telling a story about a wordcatcher. "Yes, the ////Führer//// decided that he would rule the world with words. 'I will never fire a gun,' he said. ' I will not have to..' His first plan of attack was to plant the words in as many areas of his homeland as possable... He watched them grow, until eventually great forests of words has risen throughout Germany. It was a nation of farmed thoughts." (pg 451) From this Liesel found out that all Hitler used to make this nation of farmed thoughts were a couple words, turned in the right order, to make people believe him. Once they started to believe him, they would believe anything he said and he could plant anything he wanted. But Liesel found out earlier that not all words, even if they were put in the right order, are good. she found that words can hurt. She had hurt the first person, the mayor's wife, by talking about her late son. A very sore spot for her. "She was battered and beaten up... Liesel could see in on her face. Blood leaked form her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from words. From Liesel's words."(pg 273) The way it's worded makes you think that the words hurt on the inside, ('wounds were rising to the surface of her skin'). They can hurt or heal from the inside out. Knowing that words could be used for good and for evil, Liesel begins to wonder why words are here in the first place. Why did words exist? "She tore a page from the book and ripped it in half. Then a chapter. Soon there was nothing but scraps of words littered in between her legs and all around her. The words. Why did they have to exsist? Without them there wouldn't be any of this. Without words the  ////Führer//// was nothing.There would be no limping prisoners, no need for consolation or wordy tricks to make us feel better. What good were the words?" (pg 521) This was her first act of completely despising the words that Hitler used and just words in general. Liesel wasn't sure why something that caused so much harm and hurt even existed in the world. She didn't understand that they weren't mainly used for evil but was always seeing them used that way. She had yet to see good.. I think the reason for all the book stealing is so that she can see words used in a good way and store them up for use later. She would live in a good fantasy while she read and that would make living in the real life easier. She saw words being used for good in books and she ends up using that knowledge to write her own book about her life and findings, from the good to the bad, to show the importance of words and how to use them. As it said earlier in the book, "Trust me... [the] words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like clouds, and she would wring them out like rain." (pg 80)