Quotes from Cornelia Funke

Her beauty took one's breath away, like a sudden pain.

Molotov explained how that book, should one be foolish enough to open it, gave the power to read things and creatures out of any book in the world.

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. Love, truth, beauty, wisdom and consolation against death.

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

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." Of

What terrible human presumption it is to catch other living creatures and hold them captive!

Yes, everything will be all right, thanks to Elinor! She could have sung and danced (not that she was much of a dancer and she was sitting in a car).

Jedes Buch sollte mit so einem Papier beginnen (...) Am Besten mit einem dunklen: dunkelrot, dunkelblau, je nachdem, wie der Einband des Buches ist. Wenn du dann das Buch aufschlägst, ist es wie im Theater: Erst ist da der vorhang - du ziehst ihn zur Seite, und die Vorstellung beginnt.

The Bluebeard's terrible parting gift had been to make desire rhyme with death and fear.

No. Nothing could make it easier. You lost what you loved. That was death, here as well as there.

Friedas Waffeln schmeckten noch besser als sonst. Vielleicht lag es an dem Rumaroma, das sie in den Teig mischte, vielleicht lag es aber auch einfach daran, dass ein überstandener Streit selbst trockenes Brot besser schmecken lässt.

The fairy had flown over to the window and was peering curiously out at the alley. Forget it. Stay here, said Dustfinger. Please. Believe me, it's no place for you out there. She looked at him quizzically, then folded her wings and knelt on the windowsill. And there she stayed, as if she coudln't decide between the hot room and the strange freedom to be found outside.

Perhaps she was more like him than he'd thought: her home, too, had consisted of paper and printer's ink. She probably felt as lost as he did in the real world.

forget them, or the loss of them all will drive you mad. But his heart simply did not obey. Memories, so sweet and so 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?

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.

Life seemed so much stronger than death, death so much stronger than life. Like the ebb and flow of the tide.

Fear was not red, fear is pale as a dead man's face

He bent down and lifted Sophie from his pocket… . She was still in her nightie and her feet were bare. She shivered and stared around her at the swirling mists and ghostly vapors. "Where are we?" she asked. "We is in Dream Country," the BFG said. "This is where all dreams is beginning." Roald Dahl, The BFG

It seems only yesterday I used to believe There was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I would shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed. Billy Collins, "On Turning Ten" A

Ves esos nombres? -preguntó señalando las letras cinceladas que hablaban de personas ya desaparecidas-. Detrás de cada nombre hay una familia, una madre o un padre, hermanos, acaso una esposa. Si uno de ellos averiguara que es capaz de despertar esas letras a la vida, que podría volver a ser de carne y hueso lo que ahora es únicamente un nombre, ¿no crees que él o ella harían todo lo posible por conseguirlo?

only the powerful were hated, and that was what he was meant to be in this world. Powerful.

Maybe people don't see the cruelty in your world right away, it's better hidden, but it's there all the same.

Only to be expected!' Elinor's voice almost cracked. Belligerent as a Bull Terrier, she marched up to him.

If ye see the laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him and his house, byre and stable, man, guest and master, wife, miss, or bairn—black, black be their fall." Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped