Cornelia Funke Quotes

He wants to be grown-up. How different dreams can be! Nature will soon grant your wish.
Cornelia Funke
Meggie thought this first whisper sounded a little different from one book to another, depending on weather or not she already knew the story it was going to tell her.
Cornelia Funke
For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his last punishment, let the flames of hell consume him for
Cornelia Funke
The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.
Cornelia Funke
It was a chilly morning after the night's rain, and the sun hung in the sky like a pale coin lost by someone high up in the clouds.
Cornelia Funke
She felt as if the grave stones were whispering those names to her as she walked past... Those stones that bore no names seemed like closed mouths, sad mouths that forgotten how to speak. But perhaps the dead didn't mind what their names had once been?
Cornelia Funke
What was she hoping to gain from his death? That it would numb the pain of his betrayal, or heal her injured pride? Her red sister didn't know much about love.
Cornelia Funke
Secrets... nothing eats away at love faster.
Cornelia Funke
Night was fading over the fields as if the rain had washed the darkness out of the hem of its garment.
Cornelia Funke
That bloody bastard! That thrice accursed son of a bitch!
Cornelia Funke
I will try to write books until I drop dead.
Cornelia Funke
So it's happened, I kept thinking, you're in the middle of a story exactly as you've always wanted, and it's horrible. Fear tastes quite different when you're not just reading about it, Meggie, and playing hero wasn't half as much fun as I'd expected.
Cornelia Funke
Unlike me, he realized that Dustfinger would do anything in return for such a promise. All he wants is to go back to his own world. He doesn't even stop to ask if his story there has a happy ending!""Well, that's no different from real life," remarked Elinor gloomily. "You never know if things will turn out well. Just now our own story looks like it's coming to a bad end.
Cornelia Funke
I'm perfectly happy to know the world at secondhand. It's a lot safer.
Cornelia Funke
What are stories for if we don't learn from them?
Cornelia Funke
Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page any more than they begin on the first page
Cornelia Funke
What was this yearning, tearing at her insides like hunger and thirst? It couldn't be love. Love was warm and soft, like a bed of leaves. But this was dark, like the shade under a poisonous shrub, and it was hungry. So hungry. It must have some other name, just as there couldn't be the same word for life and death, or for moon and sun
Cornelia Funke
When it came to hiding, even Gwin had nothing to teach Dustfinger. A strange sense of curiosity had always driven him to explore the hidden, forgotten corners of this and any other place, and all that knowledge had now come in useful.
Cornelia Funke
Down there the nights are bright and nobody believes in the Devil.
Cornelia Funke
All writers are insane!
Cornelia Funke
When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer.
Cornelia Funke
I'm only a kind of book doctor. I can give books new bindings, rejuvenate them a little, stop the bookworms from eating them, and prevent them from losing their pages over the years like a man loses his hair. But inventing the stories in them, filling new, empty pages with right words-- I can't do that. That's a very different trade. A famous writer once wrote, 'An author can be seen as three things: a storyteller, a teacher, or magician-- but a magician, the enchanter, is in the ascendant.
Cornelia Funke
She wanted to return to her dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don't dreams in fairy tales sometimes leave a token behind?
Cornelia Funke
The night belongs to beasts of prey, and always has. It's easy to forget that when you're indoors, protected by light and solid walls.
Cornelia Funke
Words,words filled the night like the fragrance of invisible flowers.
Cornelia Funke
Children, they're the same everywhere. Greedy little creatures but the best listeners in the world -any world. The very best of all.
Cornelia Funke
Courage was something John Reckless only ever wished he had. Courage was not a given; it was acquired, earned. You had to take the difficult paths, and John had always picked the easy ones.
Cornelia Funke
You're the one who says books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them...
Cornelia Funke
.......only the powerful were hated, and that was what he was meant to be in this world.Powerful.
Cornelia Funke
If you keep pretending you're in that book, it will make you not want to live in the life you're in.
Cornelia Funke
How ridiculous that water ran out of your eyes when your heart hurt. Tragic heroines in books tended to be amazingly beautiful. Not a word about swollen eyes or a red nose. "Crying always gives me a red nose," thought Elinor. "I expect that's why I'll never be in any book.
Cornelia Funke
I always used to read aloud to her in the evenings--
Cornelia Funke
She read and read and read, but she was stuffing herself with the letters on the page like an unhappy child stuffing itself with chocolate. They didn’t taste bad, but she was still unhappy.
Cornelia Funke
He saw so many emotions mingled on her face: anger disappointment, fear – and defiance. Like her daughter, thought Fenoglio again. So uncompromising, so strong. Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn’t break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out, very slowly.
Cornelia Funke
-You forgot something important!-What?-It's under my sweater!-WHAT?!-Me!
Cornelia Funke
Nothing is more terrifying than fearlessness.
Cornelia Funke
Because fear kills everything," Mo had once told her. "Your mind, your heart, your imagination.
Cornelia Funke
Books are like flypaper, memories cling to the printed pages better than anything else.
Cornelia Funke
So Mo began filling the silence with words. He lured them out of the pages as if they had only been waiting for his voice, words long and short, words sharp and soft, cooing, purring words. They danced through the room, painting stained glass pictures, tickling the skin. Even when Meggie nodded off she could still hear them, although Mo had closed the book long ago. Words that explained the world to her, its dark side and its light side, words that built a wall to keep out bad dreams. And not a single bad dream came over that wall for the rest of the night.
Cornelia Funke
Weren’t all books ultimately related? After all, the same letters filled them, just arranged in a different order. Which meant that, in a certain way, every book was contained in every other!
Cornelia Funke
It [the book] was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as a spider's web and enchantingly beautiful..
Cornelia Funke
There was another reason [she] took her books whenever they went away. They were her home when she was somewhere strange. They were familiar voices, friends that never quarreled with her, clever, powerful friends -- daring and knowledgeable, tried and tested adventurers who had traveled far and wide. Her books cheered her up when she was sad and kept her from being bored.
Cornelia Funke
This book taught me, once and for all, how easily you can escape this world with the help of words! You can find friends between the pages of a book, wonderful friends.
Cornelia Funke
It's a good idea to have your own books with you in a strange place
Cornelia Funke
The world was a terrible place, cruel, pitiless, dark as a bad dream. Not a good place to live. Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness - and love. Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly.
Cornelia Funke
If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.
Cornelia Funke
Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar.
Cornelia Funke
As Mo had said: writing stories is a kind of magic, too.
Cornelia Funke
Read – and be curious. And if somebody says to you: 'Things are this way. You can't change it' - don't believe a word.
Cornelia Funke
You know, it's a funny thing about writers. Most people don't stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think that writers are all dead long ago--they don't expect to meet them in the street or out shopping. They know their stories but not their names, and certainly not their faces. And most writers like it that way.
Cornelia Funke
Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?
Cornelia Funke
He hablado ex profeso con el viento -anunció-, pues hay una cosa que debes saber: cuando el viento se obstina en jugar con el fuego, ni yo mismo puedo domeñarlo. Pero me ha dado su palabra de honor de que esta noche se mantendrá en calma y no nos estropeará la diversión.
Cornelia Funke
Killing is easy," said Mo, "Dying is harder...
Cornelia Funke
Elinor had read countless stories in which the main characters fell sick at some point because they were so unhappy. She had always thought that a very romantic idea, but she’d dismissed it as a pure invention of the world of books. All those wilting heroes and heroines who suddenly gave up the ghost just because of unrequited love or longing for something they’d lost! Elinor had always enjoyed their sufferings—as a reader will. After all, that was what you wanted from books: great emotions you’d never felt yourself, pain you could leave behind by closing the book if it got too bad. Death and destruction felt deliciously real conjured up with the right words, and you could leave them behind between the pages as you pleased, at no cost or risk to yourself.
Cornelia Funke
And there stood Basta with his foot already on another dead body, smiling. Why not? He had hit his target, and it was the target he had been aiming for all along: Dustfinger’s heart, his stupid heart. It broke in two as he held Farid in his arms, it simply broke in two, although he had taken such good care of it all these years.
Cornelia Funke
Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn't break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out very slowly.
Cornelia Funke
Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you secruity and friendship and didn't ask for anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly.
Cornelia Funke
So what? All writers are lunatics!
Cornelia Funke
Stories never really end...even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.
Cornelia Funke
Dustfinger inspected his reddened fingers and felt the taut skin. ‘He might tell me how my story ends,’ he murmured.tMeggie looked at him in astonishment. ‘You mean you don’t know?’tDustfinger smiled. Meggie still didn’t particularly like his smile. It seemed to appear only to hide something else. ‘What’s so unusual about that, princess?’ he asked quietly. ‘Do you know how your story ends?’tMeggie had no answer for that.
Cornelia Funke