Quotes from Cornelia Funke

Of course no on planned to give them pleasure — the poor were put into the world to work, not to have a nice time or look at pretty pictures. That kind of thing was for the rich.

How was she supposed to deal with a child? She could hardly manage to keep her own painful heart together.

This grove, that was now so peaceful, must then have rung with cries, I thought; and even with the thought I could believe I heard it ringing still. Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

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.

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

Words weighed light, light as a feather, even the most important of them.

Es gab Geschichten, dass der Natternkopf seinem Herold auch ein Herz aus Silber hatte anfertigen lassen, aber Fenoglio war sicher, dass in der Brust des Pfeifers ein menschliches Herz schlug. Nichts war grausamer, als ein Herz aus Fleisch und Blut, weil es wusste, was Schmerzen bereitete.

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

In books, I meet the dead as if they were alive, in books I see what is yet to come … All things decay and pass with time … all fame would fall victim to oblivion if God had not given mortal men the book to aid them.

But you're too ready to believe what you want to believe, that's your trouble.

Too late had she realized what he was sowing in her. Love. Worst of all poisons.

I wish I could do that, it whispered. I'd like to bring them out of books, touch them, all those characters, all those wonderful characters. I want them to come out of the pages and sit beside me, I want them to smile at me, I want, I want, I want...

Keep the dogs off me!

Bloody brutes!

Words that explained the world to her, its dark side and its light side, words that built a wall to keep out bad dreams.

ten pages of escapism, ten pages far from everything that made him unhappy, ten pages of real life instead of the monotony that other people called the real world?

Got anything else in your backpack that we can use to tie him up?" asked Mo, nodding at the still unconscious Flatnose.

True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air. William Shakespeare, Romeo and

I'd believe any story at all just so long as it's well told.

Why do you want to tie them up?" inquired Farid. "Why not kill them? That's what they were going to do to us!

But Dustfinger must be told what happens to him, she thought, he must. Then he'll understand why he really can't go back. And all the same, she thought next, he'll still be homesick. Homesick forever.

He was stubborn as a mule, clever as a monkey, and nimble as a hare.

Then she was gone, and Violante was already missing her as the door closed. 'So?' she thought. 'Is there any feeling you understand better? Losing people and missing them -- that's what your life consists of.

They had exchanged sad stories, although both of them longed for one with a happy ending.