Quotes from Cornelia Funke

I will try to write books until I drop dead.

Everyone is small at night.

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.

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

Secrets... nothing eats away at love faster.

That bloody bastard! That thrice accursed son of a bitch!

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

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

Her skin smelled of autumn and the wind. Don't Jacob... But it was too late. Clara didn't flinch as he pulled her close. He grabbed her hair, kissed her mouth, and he felt her heart beating as fast as his own. ...Let her go, Jacob. But he kissed her again, and it was his name she whispered, not Will's.

For the hundredth time, she closed her eyes so she could see another room in her mind's eye, one with a curtain full of stars, and a mattress surrounded by books that whispered their stories to her at night. – Pg. 235

Bücher liebten jeden, der sie aufschlug, schenkten Geborgenheit und Freundschaft und verlangten nichts dafür, gingen nie fort, niemals, selbst dann nicht, wenn man sie schlecht behandelte.

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

I'm sorry, Silvertongue, but the fact is I don't believe anyone. You ought to know that by now. We're all liars when it serves our purpose.

Secrets. They add to the darkness of the world but they also make you want to find out more...

That was the use of knives for women: to cut food for the men who killed with their knives… who killed those women's husbands, their sons, and their daughters.

Although we may wish for it, true magic is a scary thing.

Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page any more than they begin on the first page

She'd been so certain she knew every crevice of his heart, but Jacob was like a country she'd only traveled through halfway.

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

I know you all think I'm a magician, but I'm not. The magic comes out of the books themselves, and I have no more idea than you or any of your men how it works.

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.

claimed to be the man who wrote a certain book – what was its name again? Inkheart. Fenoglio rubbed his aching back. Its title is Inkheart because it's about a man whose wicked heart is as black as ink, filled with darkness and evil. I still like the title.

Odd that your heart didn't simply stop when it hurt so much.

Night was fading over the fields as if the rain had washed the darkness out of the hem of its garment.