Cornelia funke quotes

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

Sometimes, when you're so sad you don't know what to do, it helps to be angry.

You really don't understand the first thing about writing...for one thing, early in the morning is the worst possible time. the brain is like a wet sponge at that hour. And for another, real writing is a question of staring into space and waiting for the right ideas.

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

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.

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

What's that sticky stuff called? Basta: Duct tape. Yes, duct tape. I love duct tape.

What's the matter princess? Do you know the end of your story?

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.

How fast the ears learned to tell what sounds meant, much faster than it took the eyes to decipher written words.

a book always keeps something of its owner between its pages.

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?

Believe, believe, believe

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!

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

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

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

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.

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

Because by now Elinor had understood this, too: A longing for books was nothing compared with what you could feel for human beings. The books told you about that feeling. The books spoke of love, and it was wonderful to listen to them, but they were no substitute for love itself. They couldn't kiss her like Meggie, they couldn't hug her like Resa, they couldn't laugh like Mortimer. Poor books, poor Elinor.

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

There are not so many mythical creatures from Inkheart.

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

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.

Words are immortal - Elinor

So what? All writers are lunatics!

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.

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.

My dear Elinor, you were obviously born into the wrong story,” said Dustfinger at last.

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.

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.

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.

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

I wish I had more time to visit schools.

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.

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?

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

Writing stories is a kind of magic, too.

I wish you luck,' she said, kissing him on the cheek. He still had the most beautiful eyes of any boy she'd ever seen. But now her heart beat so much faster for someone else.

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.

believe me. Sometimes when life looks to be at its grimmest, there's a light hidden at the heart of things. Clive Barker, Abarat

Her curiosity was too much for her. She felt almost as if she could hear the books whispering on the other side of the half-open door. They were promising her a thousand unknown stories, a thousand doors into worlds she had never seen before.

Reality is a fragile thing.

Let's be off before he gets his great horsey teeth into my poor lines of verse!

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?

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.

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

you can not fully read a book without being alone. But through this very solitude you become intimately involved with people whom you might never have met otherwise, either because they have been dead for centuries or because they spoke languages you cannot understand. And, nonetheless, they have become your closest friends, your wisest advisors, the wizards that hypnotize you, the lovers you have always dreamed of. -Antonio munoz molinas, "the power of the pen

She had found him and was bringing back his thanks. Nor did she forget to mention that he had assured her that she was indeed the most beautiful fairy he had ever set eyes on.

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.

Sometimes it's a good thing we don't remember things half as well as books do.

Because fear kills everything," Mo had once told her. "Your mind, your heart, your imagination.

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.

Ten minutes can be a long time when you're waiting with a beating heart for something you don't understand, something you don't really want to know.

Dustfinger closed his eyes and listened. He was home again.

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

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

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

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?

Sometimes Dustfinger thought Basta's constant fear of curses and sudden disaster probably arose from his terror of the darkness within himself, which made him assume that the rest of the world must be exactly the same.

I think we should sometimes read stories where everything's different from our world, don't you agree? There's nothing's like it for teaching us to wonder why trees are green and not red, and why we have five fingers rather than six.' --spoken by The Bluejay, aka Mo the Bookbinder, from 'Inkdeath

My children were all made from paper and printer's ink.

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.

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.

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

This world,' she said. 'Do you really like it?' What a question! Farid never asked himself such things. He was glad to be with Dustfinger again and didn't mind where that was. It's a cruel world, don't you think?' Meggie went on. 'Mo often told me I forget how cruel it is too easily.' With his burned fingers, Farid stroke her fair hair. It shone even in the dark. 'They're all cruel,' he said. 'The world I come from, the world you come from, and this one, too. Maybe the people don't see the cruelty in your world right away, it's better hidden, but it's there all the same.

The night breathed through the apartment like a dark animal. The ticking of a clock. The groan of a floorboard as he slipped out of his room. All was drowned by its silence. But Jacob loved the night. He felt it on his skin like a promise. Like a cloak woven from freedom and danger.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Nobody loves only once.

Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name.

He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her full on the mouth. His skin was wet with rain. When she didn't pull away, he took her face between his hands and kissed her again, on her forehead, on her nose, on her mouth once more. "You will come, won't you? Promisse!" he whispered.

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.

It was much easier for him now that he was smaller to negotiate his way through his crammed shop but he still tried to swagger past the shelves like he used to in the past. The attempt looked so strange that Scipio started to mimic him behind his back. "What's the silly giggling about?" Barbarossa asked when Prosper and Renzo bust out laughing.

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 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.

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

From the tower battlements, Dustfinger looked down on a lake as black as night, where the reflection of the castle swam in a sea of stars. The wind passing over his unscarred face was cold from the snow of the surrounding mountains, and Dustfinger relished life as if he were tasting it for the first time. The longing it brought, and the desire. All the bitterness, all the sweetness, even if it was only for a while, never for more than a while, everything gained and lost, lost and found again.

Nothing is more terrifying than fearlessness.

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.

Dustfinger inspected his reddened fingers and felt the taut skin. ‘He might tell me how my story ends,’ he murmured. Meggie looked at him in astonishment. ‘You mean you don’t know?’ Dustfinger 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?’ Meggie had no answer for that.

Mortimer's face twisted when the Piper pressed his knife against his ribs. Oh yes, he's obviously made the wrong enemies in this story, thought Orpheus. And the wrong friends. But that was high-minded heroes for you. Stupid.

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

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

Nothing chased nightmares away faster than the rustle of printed paper.

Didn't books say that too: that there is always price to pay for happiness?

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.

Why could she remember nothing but stories of frightened people when Capricorn looked at her? She usually found it so easy to escape somewhere else, to get right inside the minds of people and animals who existed only on paper, so why not now? Because she was afraid. "Because fear kills everything," Mo had once told her. "Your mind, your heart, your imagination.

Yes, I do enjoy walking at night. The world’s more to my liking then, not so loud, not so fast, not so crowded, and a good deal more mysterious.

Blue as the evening sky, blue as cranesbill flowers, blue as the lips of drowned men and the heart of a blaze burning with too hot a flame. Yes, sometimes it was hot in this world, too. Hot and cold, light and dark, terrible and beautiful, it was everything all at once. It wasn't true that you felt nothing in the land of Death. You felt and heard and smelled and saw, but your heart remained strangely calm, as if it were resting before the dance began again. Peace. Was that the word?

Are you really going to catch us and take us back to Esther? We don’t belong to her, you know.” Embarrassed, Victor stared at his shoes. “Well, children all have to belong to somebody,” he muttered. “Do you belong to someone?” “That’s different.” “Because you’re a grown-up?

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

perhaps because this time not fear but love made him read.

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

She had only to open a door, nothing but a door between the words,just large enough for her and Farid to pass through.

Hey, don't take this the wrong way, but don't come back, ok?

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?

I pledge to set out to live a thousand lives between printed pages. I pledge to use books as doors to other minds, old and young, girl and boy, man and animal. I pledge to use books to open windows to a thousand different worlds and to the thousand different faces of my own world. I pledge to use books to make my universe spread much wider than the world I live in every day. I pledge to treat my books like friends, visiting them all from time to time and keeping them close.

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.

They're all cruel,' he said. 'The world I come from, the world you come from, and this one, too. Maybe the people don't see the cruelty in your world right away, it's better hidden, but it's there all the same.

Down there the nights are bright and nobody believes in the Devil.

There could be few men whose love for a woman had been written on his face with a knife.

Hope. Nothing is more intoxicating.

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.

Power. Intoxicating. Like a fine wine.

I love to read aloud.

We're all liars when it serves our purpose.

Why do grown-ups think it's easier for children to bear secrets than the truth? Don't they know about the horror stories we imagine to explain the secrets?

Killing is easy," said Mo, "Dying is harder.

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

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.

Who are you?' Mo looked at the White Women. Then he looked at Dustfinger's still face. Guess.' The bird ruffled up its golden feathers, and Mo saw that the mark on its breast was blood. You are Death.' Mo felt the word heavy on his tongue. Could any word be heavier?

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

Perhaps there's another, much larger story behind the printed one, a story that changes just as our own world does. And the letters on the page tell us only as much as we'd see peering through a keyhole. 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.