Markus Zusak Quotes

None are so inconsiderate as those who demand nothing of life other than their own personal comfort.

I've been accused of being very vain about my apathy.

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect on me is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration centered as it is upon a lie. To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god.

I remember that my mother once told me that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.

I am a very selfish person.

In general, I can't stand people who always turn a conversation into something about them. I can't stand it when people are too into themselves.

I was very selfish when I was in the military - a very selfish man.

...the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn. If somebody hates me, they must "feel" something ... or they couldn't possibly hate. Therefore, there's some way in which I can get to them.

She didn't know there were things worse than selfish.

Everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena.

The world of the egotist is, inevitably, a narrow world, and the boundaries of self are limited to the close horizon of personality.... But, within this horizon, there is room for many attributes that are excellent.

I don't know if this makes me a bad person or whatever, but it's hard for me to get interested in other people's vacations.

People who are wrapped up in themselves make small packages.

Selfish people, with no heart to speak of, have the best time of it.

The cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.

The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.

We have become so self-centered that we go to God only for something from Him, and not for God Himself.

When you stop caring about something, then other people have to decide whether or not they genuinely care about you, or not.

How many of us, myself included, have lost our bearings; we are no longer attentive to the world in which we live; we don’t care; we don’t protect what God created for everyone, and we end up unable even to care for one another.

For one who is indifferent, life itself is a prison. Any sense of community is external or, even worse, nonexistent. Thus, indifference means solitude. Those who are indifferent do not see others. They feel nothing for others and are unconcerned with what might happen to them. They are surrounded by a great emptiness. Filled by it, in fact. They are devoid of all hope as well as imagination. In other words, devoid of any future.

He who lives only for himself is truly dead to others.

How often, in this cold and bitter world, is the warm heart thrown back upon itself! Cold, careless, are we of another's grief; we wrap ourselves in sullen selfishness.

All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.

To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.