Cornelia Funke Quotations

I have two Iceland horses, a very hairy dog called Looney, and a guinea pig.

I always wanted to ride a dragon myself, so I decided to do this for a year in my imagination.

If I was a book, I would like to be a library book, so I would be taken home by all different sorts of kids.

Every German child learns to speak English in school.

Second, there are so many magical places in books that you can't go to, like Hogwarts and Middle Earth, so I wanted to set a story in a place where children can actually go.

A library book, I imagine, is a happy book.

I wish I had more time to visit schools.

And I plan to write a sequel to Dragon Rider.

My grandmother told stories; she was very good at that.

Every reader knows about the feeling that characters in books seem more real than real people.

I like to visit my horse, have a walk with my dog.

They are shooting The Thief Lord in Venice at the moment.

I just did a picture book called The Wildest Brother on Earth, and you will find both of my children in there.

And I always read the English translation and always have conversations with my translator, for example about the names. I always have to approve it.

There are not so many mythical creatures from Inkheart.

And my father always took me to the library. We were both book addicts.

I don't like to eat the same dish every day, so I read very different things.

I like a composer called Henry Purcell, and I love to listen to Neil Young.

My daughter, Anna, is almost 15, and my son, Ben, is almost 10.

Oh, I think every author is inspired by all of the books that she reads.

I live in Hamburg; that's in the north. And I live on the outskirts of town. It looks like countryside.

I love to read, I love to watch movies, and I love to be with my children.

I will try to write books until I drop dead.

My son always says I like very weird music.

Yes, I always imagined living in other places.

I have a writing chamber stuffed with things children send me and lots of dragons because I collect them, and I look out into the woods from there.

The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.

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.

Words were useless. At times, they might sound wonderful, but they let you down the moment you really needed them. You could never find the right words, never, and where would you look for them? The heart is as silent as a fish, however much the tongue tries to give it a voice.

You know what they say: When people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings.

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.

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.

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.

She is a real bookworm. I think she lives on print. Her whole house is full of books - looks as if she likes them better than human company.

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?

Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name.

Books are like flypaper, memories cling to the printed pages better than anything else.

The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages.

She pressed her hand against her chest. No heart. So where did the love she felt come from?

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?

If you keep pretending you're in that book, it will make you not want to live in the life you're in.

So what? All writers are lunatics!

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.

Please," she whispered as she opened the book, "please get me out of here just for an hour or so, please take me far, far away

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.

We're all liars when it serves our purpose.

A reader doesn't really see the characters in a story; he feels them.

You know a great many things in dreams, often despite the evidence of your eyes. You just know them.

When you open a book it's like going to the theater first you see the curtain then it is pulled aside and the show begins.

Read – and be curious. And if somebody says to you: 'Things are this way. You can't change it' - don't believe a word.

Everyone is small at night.

Books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them.

She always did like tales of adventure-stories full of brightness and darkness. She could tell you the names of all King Arthur's knights, and she knew everything about Beowulf and Grendel, the ancient gods and the not-quite-so-ancient heroes. She liked pirate stories, too, but most of all she loved books that had at least a knight or a dragon or a fairy in them. She was always on the dragon's side by the way.

Go back and rid the word of that book. Fill it with words before spring comes, or winter will never end for you. And I will take not only your life for the Adderhead's but your daughter's, too, because she helped you bind the book. Do you undersand, Bluejay" Why two?" asked Mo hoarsely. "How can you ask for two lives in return for one?

All books are in safe hands with me. They're my children, my inky children, and I look after them well. I keep the sunlight away from their pages, I dust and protect them from hungry hookworms and grubby human fingers.

Nothing is more terrifying than fearlessness.

Why did death make life taste so much sweeter? Why could the heart love only what it could also lose?

In love - it sounded like a sickness without any cure, and wasn't that just how it sometimes felt?

Fire and water," he said, "don't really mix. You could say they're incompatible. But when they do love each other, they love passionately.

The truth's not pretty of course. No one likes to look it in the face.

It's a good idea to have your own books with you in a strange place

Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness and love.

My wife loves written words ... you know, words that stick to parchment and paper like dead flies, and it seems my father felt the same - but I want to hear words! Remember that when you are looking for the right words: You must ask yourself what they SOUND like! Glowing with passion, dark with sorrow, sweet with love, that's what I want. - Cosimo

He longed for the deep as she longed for the night sky and for white lilies floating on water -- although she still tried to convince herself that love alone could feed her soul.

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.

Many [book] even lay flat in the floor open. Their spines upward. Elinor couldn't bear to look! Didn't the monster know that was the way to break a book's neck?

Where did the love come from? What was it made of?

I'm perfectly happy to know the world at secondhand. It's a lot safer.

The spoken word is nothing. It hardly lives longer than an insect! Only the written word is eternal. - Balbulus

The heart was a weak, changeable thing, bent on nothing but love, and there could be no more fatal mistake than to make it your master. Reason must be in charge. It comforted you for the heart's foolishness, it sang mocking songs about love, derided it as a whim of nature, transient as flowers. So why did she still keep following her heart?

Nobody loves only once.

Memories, so sweet and bitter.. they had both nourished and devoured him for so many years. Until a time came when they began to fade, turning faint and blurred, only an ache to be quickly pushed away because it went to your heart. For what was the use of remembering all you had lost?

Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on a pan: It always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on - developing and changing like our own world.

-You forgot something important! -What? -It's under my sweater! -WHAT?! -Me!

Words are immortal - Elinor

Is there anything in the world better than words on the page? Magic signs, the voices of the dead, building blocks to make wonderful worlds better than this one, comforters, companions in loneliness. Keepers of secrets, speakers of the truth...all those glorious words.

Meggie Folchart: Having writer's block? Maybe I can help. Fenoglio: Oh yes, that's right. You want to be a writer, don't you? Meggie Folchart: You say that as if it's a bad thing. Fenoglio: Oh no, it's just a lonely thing. Sometimes the world you create on the page seems more friendly and alive than the world you actually live in.

Neither Goyl nor men lived long enough to understand that yesterday was born of tomorrow, just as tomorrow was born of yesterday.

What a plague love is!

Accursed, blasted, heartless things [books]! Full of empty promises, full of false lures, always making you hungry, never satisfying you, never!

It's the same in real life: Notorious murderers get off scot-free and live happily all their lives, while good people die - sometimes the very best people. That's the way of the world.

Children are caterpillars and adults are butterflies. No butterfly ever remembers what it felt like being a caterpillar.

Thats beautiful! Sad and beautiful," murmured Meggie. Why were sad stories often so beautiful? It was different in real life.

Children, they're the same everywhere. Greedy little creatures but the best listeners in the world - any world. The very best of all.

Every book should begin with attractive endpapers. Preferably in a dark colour: dark red or dark blue, depending on the binding. When you open the book it's like going to the theatre. First you see the curtain. Then it's pulled aside and the show begins.

Reality is a fragile thing.

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.

It's a cruel world, don't you think?

Power. Intoxicating. Like a fine wine.

Why would we ever want to go back when your world is so accommodating with your telephones and your guns and what's that sticky stuff called ...duct tape.

A thousand enemies outside the house are better than one within. Arab proverb

No prince had lived in those wretched hovels, no red-robed bishops, only farmers and laborers whose stories no one had written down, and now they were lost, buried under wild thyme and fast growing spurge.

Second, there are so many magical places in books that you cant go to, like Hogwarts and Middle Earth, so I wanted to set a story in a place where children can actually go.

We all know what fun it can be to get right into a book and live there for a while, but falling out of a story and suddenly finding yourself in this world doesn't seem to be much fun at all.

Let's run away to Venice, and hide out in an old movie theater. We can dye our hair blonde, so no one will ever find us!

He wants to be grown-up. How different dreams can be! Nature will soon grant your wish.

But after all, the villains are the salt in the soup of a story.

What are stories for if we don't learn from them?

Words,words filled the night like the fragrance of invisible flowers.

When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer.