Cornelia Funke Quotes

“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

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

— Cornelia Funke

“Nothing is more terrifying than fearlessness.”

— 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

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.

— Cornelia Funke

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

— Cornelia Funke

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

— Cornelia Funke

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

— Cornelia Funke

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

— Cornelia Funke

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.

— Cornelia Funke

“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.”

— Cornelia Funke

“Nobody loves only once.”

— Cornelia Funke

“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?”

— Cornelia Funke

“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”

— Cornelia Funke

“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.”

— Cornelia Funke

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

— Cornelia Funke

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

— Cornelia Funke

“A longing for books [is] nothing compared with what you [can] feel for human beings. The books [tell] you about that feeling. The books [speak] of love, and it [is] wonderful to listen to them, but they [are] no substitute for love itself.”

— Cornelia Funke

“A story is a labyrinth, it looks as if there were several ways to go, but only one is right, and there's a nasty surprise ready to punish you for every false step.”

— 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

I will try to write books until I drop dead.

— Cornelia Funke

“How loud a heart could beat. Until it took your breath away.”

— Cornelia Funke

“Belive you me, this maze is a labrinth!”

— 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

“But i know a lot about the kind of men you mean. They're the same everywhere.”

— Cornelia Funke

Wasn't that what all stories said?You felt it, like a pang in your heart, when something was happening to someone you love

— Cornelia Funke

“Oh, putrid puffballs! Stop winding us all up like this or I'll tie a knot in your tail!”

— Cornelia Funke

“You're the one who says books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside of them, said Meggie ...”

— Cornelia Funke

“Nichts war grausamer als ein Herz aus Fleisch und Blut, weil es wusste, was Schmerzen bereitet.”

— Cornelia Funke

“Look at your daughter,' she whispered. 'As brave as ... as.. She wanted to compare Meggie to a hero in some story but all the heroes she could think of were men, and anyway none of them seemed to her brave enough for comparison to the girl standing there, perfectly straight, scrutinizing Capricorn's Black Jackets, with her chin jutting out defiantly.”

— Cornelia Funke

“Meggie looked up at the dense thicket of branches. She had never set eyes on a tree like it before. The bark was reddish brown, but as rough as the bark of an oak, and the trunk did not branch until high up in the tree, although it had so many bulges that you could find footholds and handholds everywhere. In some places huge tree fungi formed platforms. Hollows gaped in the towering trunk, and crevices full of feathers showed that human beings were not the only creatures to have nested in this tree.”

— Cornelia Funke

“No, it wasn't quite true that John had no conscience at all. Everyone had one. But there were many voices in his head that had an easier time reaching him: his ambition, his desire for fame and success-and for revenge.”

— Cornelia Funke

“True love, selfless and deep as the oceans in their most fathomless depths." Orlando let the glove run along the thread, which glistened like a ray of sunlight. "But I fear this one is not meant for me. This kind of thread is not spun in mere days."
He let his hand drop, and the gold disappeared as though it really had been nothing but a ray of sunlight. "The Golden Yarn ... or the inseverable bond, as it is also called. As inseverable as the threads of fate. And there is only one who can spin them and who can cut them.”

— Cornelia Funke

“They (books) 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.”

— Cornelia Funke

“Why such haste? For a foolish hope? Why did his heart always insist on believing that there was a light in all the darkness?”

— Cornelia Funke

“Yesterday. Was there a more merciless word?”

— Cornelia Funke

“If she'd known him better, she might've tried to explain to Will that life never lets you hide. Plant, animal, or human-life forced them all to grow and learn. The more you tried to run, the harder your path got, and you'd still have to travel it.”

— Cornelia Funke

The rain pummeled the old Dragon bones as though to provide the rhythm to the song of their mortality, but death was not what they had on their minds-or wasn't love sometimes called the small death?

— Cornelia Funke

“He still looked so sad. Not a sign of the laughter that once used to be as much a part of his face as his black eyes. The smile he gave her now was only a sad shadow of it.”

— Cornelia Funke

Many of the snowflakes, he had told her, were tiny elves who kissed your face with icy lips before melting on your warm skin.

— Cornelia Funke

“So often it is words or pictures that first tell us what we long for.”

— Cornelia Funke

“And all was well.”

— Cornelia Funke

“Time is a horse that runs in the heart, a horse Without a rider on a road at night. The mind sits listening and hears it pass.”

— Cornelia Funke

“Oh, if you're a bird, be an early bird And catch the worm for your breakfast plate. If you're a bird, be an early bird But if you're a worm, sleep late.”

— Cornelia Funke

“[She] did not reply. She didn't want to talk to anyone. She just wanted to listen to what her bewildered heart was telling her.”

— Cornelia Funke

“Every German child learns to speak English in school.”

— Cornelia Funke

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

— Cornelia Funke

“I wish I had more time to visit schools.”

— Cornelia Funke

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

— Cornelia Funke

I remember the feeling. Whenever my father got so absorbed in a book that we might have been in visible I felt like taking a pair of scissors and cutting it up.

— Cornelia Funke