Funke Quotes & Sayings

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. — Cornelia Funke

First he sees her only in his dreams. Skin as white as moonlight. Eyes like water drowning you. Hair like spider webs. Fairy. — Cornelia Funke

So what? All writers are lunatics! — Cornelia Funke

For Her Ugliness loved stories full of darkness. She didn't want to be told tales of good fortune and beauty, she liked to hear about death, ugly things, secrets heavy with tears. She wanted her very own world, and it had never heard of beauty and good fortune. — Cornelia Funke

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

My voice had bayou gut them slipping out of their story like a bookmark forgotten by a reader between the pages — Cornelia Funke

They wouldn't tell Scipio how much of the counterfeit cash was left since, as Riccio put it, 'You're a detective now, after all. — Cornelia Funke

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. — Cornelia Funke

All writers are insane! — 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

Well what does it matter,' he muttered when he was out in the corridor. 'Who wants to know the end of a story in advance? — Cornelia Funke

Quite suddenly Meggie felt fear rise in her like black brackish water, she felt lost, terribly lost, she felt it in every part of her. She didn't belong here! What had she done? — Cornelia Funke

Don't let it worry you, not being able to speak,'Dustfinger had often told her. 'People tend not to listen anyway, right? — Cornelia Funke

It was a page he had Found in the handbook Of heartbreak. Wallace Stevens, "Madame la Fleurie," Collected Poems I — Cornelia Funke

She had thought the chewing and digesting were meant literally and wondered, horrified, why Mo had hung on his workshop door the words of someone who vandalized books. — Cornelia Funke

Resa longed for the kitchen, always full of the humming of the oversize fridge, for mo's workshop in the garden, and the armchair in the library where you could sit and visit strange worlds without getting lost in them — Cornelia Funke

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. — Cornelia Funke

The night swallowed him up like a thieving fox. — Cornelia Funke

It was like a promise that wishes could come true, that desire might lead to more than yearning. — Cornelia Funke

Love scared him. It was soft. And vulnerable. — Cornelia Funke

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

Killing is easy," said Mo, "Dying is harder... — Cornelia Funke

Love is always a prison. — Cornelia Funke

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 — Cornelia Funke

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. — Cornelia Funke

The only way ghosts can hurt you is through your own fear — Cornelia Funke

It's bad enough sitting in a car, never mind driving it. — Cornelia Funke

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

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? — Cornelia Funke

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

He bent over Farid and wiped some soot from his cold forehead. "Roxanne knows it," he said. "She'll tell it to you. Just go to her and ... and tell her I've had to go away. Tell her I'm going to find out if the story is true."
He spoke with a strange kind of hesitation, as if it were infinitely difficult to find the right words. "And remind her of my promise - that I'll always find a way back to her, wherever I am. Will you tell her that? — Cornelia Funke

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? — Cornelia Funke

A library book, I imagine, is a happy book. — Cornelia Funke

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). — Cornelia Funke

But his heart, strangely enough, told him something else. — Cornelia Funke

It had always been a myth that it was those who loved you who could see through you. It was those you feared who could see through you most clearly. — Cornelia Funke

What was this yearning, tearing at her insides like hunger and thirst? It couldn't be love. Love was warm and soft, like a bed of leaves. But this was dark, like the shade under a poisonous shrub, and it was hungry. So hungry. It must have some other name, just as there couldn't be the same word for life and death, or for moon and sun — Cornelia Funke

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

Secrets... nothing eats away at love faster. — Cornelia Funke

things may be acceptable to our society however, it is not acceptable to God. — Pam Funke

Maybe love bore fruit even more poisonous than fear. — Cornelia Funke

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. — Cornelia Funke

Mo could paint pictures in the empty air with his voice alone. — Cornelia Funke

They slept with each other for the first time while waiting out a storm in an abandoned shepherd hut. The hours the storm granted them, surrounded by raw wool and rusty shears, felt like a month, a year, all the years they'd been waiting for this, full of fear of their kisses, of their too-familiar skins. So far from all their memories, it felt as if they were meeting each other for the first time all over again. The horse scraping around in the discarded fleece, the storm, the sound of rain, Jacob gathered it all, like jewelry he would put around Fox's neck whenever they would remember this first time. — Cornelia Funke

What was a slap for 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? — Cornelia Funke

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. — 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

I hope you drop dead!" She screamed as Basta hauled her out of the room. "I hope you burn to death! I hope you suffocate in your own smoke!"
Basta laughed as he closed the door. "Just listen to this little wildcat!" He said. "I think I'll have to watch my step with you around! — 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

What are stories for if we don't learn from them? — Cornelia Funke

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. — Cornelia Funke

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. — Cornelia Funke

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

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

I like a composer called Henry Purcell, and I love to listen to Neil Young. — Cornelia Funke

The tent in which she first met him had smelled of blood, of the death she did not understand, and still she had thought of it all as a game. She had promised him the world. His flesh in the flesh of his enemies. And much too late had she realized what he had sown in her. Love. Worst of all poisons. — Cornelia Funke

There it was, that familiar fear, love's terrible price. — Cornelia Funke

Everyone is small at night. — Cornelia Funke

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

Books have to be heavy, because they have the whole world in them. — Cornelia Funke

What's so unusual about that, princess?" he asked quietly. "Do you know how your story ends? — Cornelia Funke

Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name. — Cornelia Funke

She felt as if the grave stones were whispering those names to her as she walked past ... Those stones that bore no names seemed like closed mouths, sad mouths that forgotten how to speak. But perhaps the dead didn't mind what their names had once been? — Cornelia Funke

And I plan to write a sequel to Dragon Rider. — 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

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. — Cornelia Funke

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. — Cornelia Funke

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

Breath the words and they will come to life; as of words of magic — Cornelia Funke

Belive you me, this maze is a labrinth! — Cornelia Funke

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. — Cornelia Funke

Children, they're the same everywhere. Greedy little creatures but the best listeners in the world -any world. The very best of all. — Cornelia Funke

Every soldier had to battle his weaker self. His weaker self had brought Donnersmarck to his knees, trembling. He had screamed it away, he had outrun it, he had drowned it in the blood of others. And he had always defeated it. — Cornelia Funke

How loud a heart could beat. Until it took your breath away. — Cornelia Funke

Oh yes, he was an idiot. He'd always been frightened by how much he needed her. And now it was too late. — Cornelia Funke

He closed the window, and the scents of the past again flooded the room, like a bunch of wilted flowers. — Cornelia Funke

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 — Cornelia Funke

After all," she said, "many people here have little enough patience or understanding for their fellow human beings who are only superficially different than them - so how would it be for little people with blue skins who can fly? — Cornelia Funke

Words are immortal -until someone comes along and burns them. — Cornelia Funke

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

Only the powerful were hated, and that was what he was meant to be in this world.
Powerful. — Cornelia Funke

Everything gets to me. I'm very sentimental. — Cornelia Funke

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

Love didn't deserve the nice reputation it had. — Cornelia Funke

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

Together. Even in death. His fingers tightened their grip around her hand. A double statue of silver. Romantic. What would their faces show? Fear? Or love? — Cornelia Funke

Nothing was more cruel than a heart made of flesh and blood, because it knew what gives pain. — Cornelia Funke

With every new day, Fenoglio's story was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as spider's webs and enchantingly beautiful — Cornelia Funke

Writing stories is a kind of magic, too. — Cornelia Funke

Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask for anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly. Love, truth, beauty, wisdom and consolation against death. Who had said that? someone else who loved books. — Cornelia Funke

She'd fallen in love with the wrong boy. But when did love ever bother about that? — Cornelia Funke

Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too!" Fenoglio snapped at her. "My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here," he said holding them out to her, "don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words Meggie! 'Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm it's creator! — Cornelia Funke

One day God felt he ought to give his workshop a spring-clean ... . It was amazing what ragged bits and pieces came out from under his workbench as he swept. Beginnings of creatures, bits that looked useful but had seemed wrong, ideas that he'd mislaid and forgotten ... . There was even a tiny lump of sun. He scratched his head. What could be done with all this rubbish? Ted Hughes, "Leftovers," from The Dreamfighter — Cornelia Funke

Sometimes, through the window of a car coming the other way, she caught a glimpse if a stranger's face, then it was gone, like a book you open then close at once. — Cornelia Funke

Sometimes a crow lands on the roof of the house. It sits there for hours and watches the girl. The woman doesn't chase the bird away. — Cornelia Funke

This is how hatred begins
with a muffled laugh on a hot night and a knock on the door. — Teresa R. Funke

She shed no tears. She just sat there, as if someone had cut out her heart. — Cornelia Funke