Quotes from Alan Gratz

Hideki had always been the smallest boy in the school, and Yoshio had never let him forget it. Hideki was fourteen years old but looked like he was twelve, with a round boyish face, thin arms and legs, and short-cropped black hair.

What would happen, Reshmina wondered, if the big countries stopped selling weapons to the little countries?

Every person should be free to read whatever they want, whenever they want, and not have to explain to anyone else why we like it, or why we think it's valuable. I hope you all get a chance to read my books someday.

It was a world war, and the fate of every nation on Earth, neutral or not, lay in the balance. When the war was over, the world would be ruled one way, or the other—by freedom or fascism, by hope or by fear. I had seen the depths, the lengths, the Nazis would go to win that war, sacrificing their own children to the cause, and I also knew firsthand the sacrifices the Allies had made to stop them. I

But what if Darius really was messing with us? What if the clues he was feeding us were deliberate fakes? What if he knew he was in Arizona all along, and was dropping these clues to throw me off the scent, knowing I would be the one person in the world who would do anything I could to find him?

Did that Tik Tok just poop a giraffe?" Fergus asked.

We're a team, you and I

were weren't

Seven thousand Jews had been collected and taken away to die, but we were not among them.

Rumors were whispered in the streets: that shootings in the woods were too much trouble for the Nazis. Now they were gassing Jews to death in trucks and boiling their bodies to make soap, or so it was said.

Julia Gary.

Words came floating toward us, pieces of sentences. Big, deep words magnified by stadium speakers: "… two-minute warning! … halftime show!" Darius and I locked eyes. In the same moment, we both knew where we were. We were at the Super Bowl. The thing we were inside jerked. Rumbled. Started to move. And then I understood—we were inside a giant stage. One of those enormous platforms they wheel out during the Super Bowl halftime. And we were the halftime show.

After a moment, there was a quiet splash, and the mourners said together, "Remember, God, that we are of dust." One by one they stepped to the rail, where they released handfuls of sand—the sand Josef's father had told him to take from the sandbox. Josef joined his father at the rail, and they scattered their sand in the sea.

American devils, whose only purpose is to kill you and your families in the most brutal, merciless ways possible.

I stared at Emily Reed as the truck churned slowly toward the center of the field. She had her back to me now, talking to the camera. Reporting on the sudden, alarming interruption to the most-watched sporting event in America. The interruption she herself had planned. I had to do something. Tell someone. Stop her. The Black Widow was right there, in the lower section of the stadium, not a hundred feet from me!

Almost four years ago, the Japanese had sneak-attacked Pearl Harbor, a US naval base in the Hawaiian Islands.

1) Be the strongest of the strong. 2) Be the bravest of the brave. 3) Help the helpless. 4) Always tell the truth. 5) Be loyal. 6) Never give up. 7) Kill all monsters.

All my life, I kept waiting for things to get better. For the bright promise of mañana. But a funny thing happened while I was waiting for the world to change, Chabele: It didn't. Because I didn't change it.

If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, I would have eaten more. I wouldn't have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath, or going to bed at eight o'clock every night. I would have played more. Laughed more. I would have hugged my parents and told them I loved them. But I was ten years old, and I had no idea of the nightmare that was to come. None of us did.

Life is but a river. It has no beginning, no middle, no end. All we are, all we are worth, is what we do while we float upon it — how we treat our fellow man.

If no one saw them, no one could help them. And maybe the world needed to see what was really happening here.

Your parents, Oskar and Mina. They are dead and gone now, Yanek, and we would grieve them if we could. But we have only one purpose now: survive. Survive at all costs, Yanek. We cannot let these monsters tear us from the pages of the world.

Head down, hoodie up, eyes on the ground. Be unimportant. Blend in. Disappear. That was how you avoided the bullies.

It was all a big joke. I could see that now. There was no rhyme or reason to whether we lived or died. One day it might be the man next to you at roll call who is torn apart by dogs. The next day it might be you who is shot through the head. You could play the game perfectly and still lose, so why bother playing at all?