Top 300 Cornelia Funke Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “They forked up in the air for him, like trees branching in the night, and rained down sparks. They roared and whispered with their crackling voices, they had danced when he said the word. The flames here were both tame and mutinous, strange, silent beasts that sometimes bit the hand that fed them. Only occasionally, on cold nights when there was nothing but the flames to stave off his loneliness, did he think he heard them calling to him, but they whispered words he didn’t understand.”

— Cornelia Funke

152. “I wish I had more time to visit schools.”

— Cornelia Funke

153. “Maybe love bore fruit even more poisonous than fear.”

— Cornelia Funke

154. “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

155. “I like a composer called Henry Purcell, and I love to listen to Neil Young.”

— Cornelia Funke

156. “Everyone is small at night.”

— Cornelia Funke

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

— Cornelia Funke

158. “The spoken word is nothing. It hardly lives longer than an insect! Only the written word is eternal. – Balbulus.”

— Cornelia Funke

159. “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

160. “Dustfinger closed his eyes and listened. He was home again.”

— Cornelia Funke

161. “Sometimes Fox thought all the men she knew had the dreams and wishes of nine-year-old boys – at least all the men she liked.”

— Cornelia Funke

162. “Didn’t books say that too: that there is always price to pay for happiness?”

— Cornelia Funke

163. “It was hard to let go of love. Once woven, its ribbon was hard to tear, and this one she’d woven quite firmly herself.”

— Cornelia Funke

164. “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

165. “The wheels of the pocket watch began to move in their perfect rhythm, confirming once again that there was no end to well-kept order. Immortality was clean and precise. For sure it didn’t need a heart. A heartbeat became irregular so easily and at the end it stopped, however carefully one treated it.”

— Cornelia Funke

166. “Nobody loves only once.”

— Cornelia Funke

167. “My grandmother told stories; she was very good at that.”

— Cornelia Funke

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

168. “And I always read the English translation and always have conversations with my translator, for example about the names. I always have to approve it.”

— Cornelia Funke

169. “We all know what fun it can be to get right into a book and live there for a while, but falling out of a story and suddenly finding yourself in this world doesn’t seem to be much fun at all.”

— Cornelia Funke

Featured in: Fun Quotes

170. “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.”

— Cornelia Funke

171. “You humans love mirrors. You have to constantly make sure you still have the same face. Nothing scares you more than if someone changes it.”

— Cornelia Funke

172. “Librarians. He’d never met one with a bad memory. He had a theory that words stuck to their minds like flies to flypaper.”

— Cornelia Funke

173. “Yes, Mo would come. Meggie could think of nothing else as Fenoglio led her away with him, his arm around her as if he could really protect her from Capricorn and Basta and all the others. But he couldn’t. Would Mo be able to protect her? Of course not. He mustn’t come, she thought. Please. Perhaps he won’t be able to find his way in again! He mustn’t come. Yet there was nothing she wanted more, nothing in the whole wide world.”

— Cornelia Funke

174. “There could be few men whose love for a woman had been written on his face with a knife.”

— Cornelia Funke

175. “Power. Like wine when you have it. Like poison when you lose it.”

— Cornelia Funke

176. “Fear was like a beast that only grew fiercer when one gave in to it.”

— Cornelia Funke

177. “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

178. “My son always says I like very weird music.”

— Cornelia Funke

179. “I will try to write books until I drop dead.”

— Cornelia Funke

180. “You can’t expect the wolf to turn vegetarian because of one Pup.”

— Cornelia Funke

181. “Why did such truths only reveal themselves after they’d become lies?”

— Cornelia Funke

182. “Why were love and death such close neighbors?”

— Cornelia Funke

183. “And the pain was back again, and time, and longing too.”

— Cornelia Funke

184. “Whenever he felt the sharp pangs of homesickness he had come back here to his old enemies, where he didn’t feel quite so out of place.”

— Cornelia Funke

185. “She had found him and was bringing back his thanks. Nor did she forget to mention that he had assured her that she was indeed the most beautiful fairy he had ever set eyes on.”

— Cornelia Funke

186. “Courage was not given; it was acquired, earned. You had to take the difficult paths.”

— Cornelia Funke

187. “Where did the love come from? What was it made of?”

— Cornelia Funke

188. “So often it is words or pictures that first tell us what we long for.”

— Cornelia Funke

189. “Fox could’ve kissed him on the mouth just to taste the smile on his lips. Forbidden. She’d almost forgotten.”

— Cornelia Funke

190. “Why could she remember nothing but stories of frightened people when Capricorn looked at her? She usually found it so easy to escape somewhere else, to get right inside the minds of people and animals who existed only on paper, so why not now? Because she was afraid. “Because fear kills everything,” Mo had once told her. “Your mind, your heart, your imagination.”

— Cornelia Funke

191. “Oh, if you’re a bird, be an early bird And catch the worm for your breakfast plate. If you’re a bird, be an early bird But if you’re a worm, sleep late.”

— Cornelia Funke

192. “The Bluebeard’s terrible parting gift had been to make desire rhyme with death and fear.”

— Cornelia Funke

193. “The python dropped his head lightly for a moment on Mowgli’s shoulders. “A brave heart and a courteous tongue,” said he. “They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling.”

— Cornelia Funke

194. “Secrets... nothing eats away at love faster.”

— Cornelia Funke

195. “Her beauty took one’s breath away, like a sudden pain.”

— Cornelia Funke

196. “Life is so simple when you’re young, though of course that’s not what it feels like to the young.”

— Cornelia Funke

197. “It must be a dangerous world.” Meggie was trying to imagine it all: the giants, the trolls, and the fairies. Mo had once given her a book about fairies. Dustfinger shrugged. “Yes, it’s dangerous, so what? This world’s dangerous, too, isn’t it?”

— Cornelia Funke

198. “I prefer a story that has the good sense to stay on the page where it belongs. – Elinor.”

— Cornelia Funke

199. “Perhaps there’s another, much larger story behind the printed one, a story that changes just as our own world does. And the letters on the page tell us only as much as we’d see peering through a keyhole. 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.”

— Cornelia Funke

200. “Her heart pounded as he kissed her. Or was it his heart? She hadn’t been able to tell the difference ever since he’d freed her from that trap.”

— Cornelia Funke