Top 300 Cornelia Funke Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Books have to be heavy because the whole world’s inside them.”

— Cornelia Funke

2. “It’s a cruel world, don’t you think?”

— Cornelia Funke

3. “Writing stories is a kind of magic, too.”

— Cornelia Funke

4. “The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.”

— Cornelia Funke

5. “If I was a book, I would like to be a library book, so I would be taken home by all different sorts of kids.”

— Cornelia Funke

6. “A thousand enemies outside the house are better than one within. Arab proverb.”

— Cornelia Funke

7. “We’re all liars when it serves our purpose.”

— Cornelia Funke

8. “Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you secruity and friendship and didn’t ask for anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly.”

— Cornelia Funke

9. “Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?”

— Cornelia Funke

10. “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

11. “Words are immortal – Elinor.”

— Cornelia Funke

12. “What are stories for if we don’t learn from them?”

— Cornelia Funke

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

13. “Sometimes, when you’re so sad you don’t know what to do, it helps to be angry.”

— Cornelia Funke

14. “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

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

— Cornelia Funke

16. “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

17. “Reality is a fragile thing.”

— Cornelia Funke

18. “You know a great many things in dreams, often despite the evidence of your eyes. You just know them.”

— Cornelia Funke

19. “I love to read aloud.”

— Cornelia Funke

20. “Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness and love.”

— Cornelia Funke

21. “Isn’t it odd how much fatter a book gets when you’ve read it several times?”

— Cornelia Funke

22. “Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name.”

— Cornelia Funke

23. “Farid had brought an invisible guest with him. Fear.”

— Cornelia Funke

24. “What’s that sticky stuff called? Basta: Duct tape. Yes, duct tape. I love duct tape.”

— Cornelia Funke

25. “A reader doesn’t really see the characters in a story; he feels them.”

— Cornelia Funke

26. “Dustfinger still clearly remembered the feeling of being in love for the first time. How vulnerable his heart had suddenly been! Such a trembling, quivering thing, happy and miserably unhappy at once.”

— Cornelia Funke

27. “Read – and be curious. And if somebody says to you: ‘Things are this way. You can’t change it’ – don’t believe a word.”

— Cornelia Funke

28. “She is a real bookworm. I think she lives on print. Her whole house is full of books – looks as if she likes them better than human company.”

— Cornelia Funke

29. “Nothing chased nightmares away faster than the rustle of printed paper.”

— Cornelia Funke

30. “When you open a book it’s like going to the theater first you see the curtain then it is pulled aside and the show begins.”

— Cornelia Funke

31. “Why did death make life taste so much sweeter? Why could the heart love only what it could also lose?”

— Cornelia Funke

32. “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

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

— Cornelia Funke

34. “Power. Intoxicating. Like a fine wine.”

— Cornelia Funke

35. “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

36. “What’s the matter princess? Do you know the end of your story?”

— Cornelia Funke

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

37. “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

38. “Guilt is a strong motivator, sometimes even stronger than love.”

— Cornelia Funke

39. “Since when does the butterfly ask about the caterpillar?”

— Cornelia Funke

40. “It’s a good idea to have your own books with you in a strange place.”

— Cornelia Funke

41. “Hope. Nothing is more intoxicating.”

— Cornelia Funke

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

— Cornelia Funke

43. “If you keep pretending you’re in that book, it will make you not want to live in the life you’re in.”

— Cornelia Funke

44. “What a plague love is!”

— Cornelia Funke

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

— Cornelia Funke

46. “Everything gets to me. I’m very sentimental.”

— Cornelia Funke

47. “In love – it sounded like a sickness without any cure, and wasn’t that just how it sometimes felt?”

— Cornelia Funke

48. “I love to read, I love to watch movies, and I love to be with my children.”

— Cornelia Funke

49. “Believe, believe, believe.”

— Cornelia Funke

50. “Isn’t it odd how much fatter a book gets when you’ve read it several times?” Mo had said... “As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells... and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower... both strange and familiar.”

— Cornelia Funke