Entry #1

"Mistakes, mistakes, it's all I seem capable of at times."
- Death, page 23

A lot of authors don't pay enough attention to death in their stories. When a character dies, most authors either a.) pull one of those "...and then they died. That's it." moments on us, b.) give us the most disgustingly gory, medieval-torture deaths, or c.) turn all the other characters into sappy, sobbing messes and write eight chapters about that particular character's funeral. People don't think about death much, unless, of course, they're dying.
It's rare to find a book that isn't focused so much on a character dying, but on Death himself. Death is a physical thing, the body shutting down, for all things, human or not. But Death, the person, is a human concept. In the few books I've read that actually feature Death among the rotating cast of characters, he is portrayed as a dark, gloomy shadow sent to collect the souls of the dead and make the living characters lives miserable. I think that what people forget is that Death is so astoundingly human. We have funerals to give a feeling of peace to the living relatives and friends of the dead. We mourn, we grieve, we wonder about an afterlife. We entertain the idea that one day, we will see our deceased loved ones again.
Zusak's idea of Death is different. Death is not the sad creature that watches until a soul needs to be taken. He is curious, hardworking, and selfish, much like a human being. I think that his fascination with Liesel is meant to show the readers how he has the curiosity of a human. With that curiosity comes selfishness, wanting more and more of human experience for himself.
This quote stuck out to me because humans are always so hung up on their mistakes. We focus so much on the things we do wrong, it's hard to enjoy the life we've got while we've got it.