Top 300 Cornelia Funke Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “A child in the woods. A child with an army.”

— Cornelia Funke

252. “Molotov explained how that book, should one be foolish enough to open it, gave the power to read things and creatures out of any book in the world.”

— Cornelia Funke

253. “No. Nothing could make it easier. You lost what you loved. That was death, here as well as there.”

— Cornelia Funke

254. “Although it’s not just plants and animals that die out, so do books. Quite often, I’m sorry to say. I’m sure you could fill a hundred houses like this one to the roof with all the books that have disappeared forever.”

— Cornelia Funke

255. “A wedding, a daughter in payment, and a white dress to hide all the bloody battlefields.”

— Cornelia Funke

256. “He looked so glorious. Just like the knights I had dreamed about when I was six years old, whacking at brambles iin our garden, imagining I was fighting dragons and giants with a sword that made me invincible and wearing armor that protected me from all the things that frightened me – older kids, dogs, a storm in the knight, or my little sister’s questions about when our father would be coming back.”

— Cornelia Funke

257. “I’m only a kind of book doctor. I can give books new bindings, rejuvenate them a little, stop the bookworms from eating them, and prevent them from losing their pages over the years like a man loses his hair. But inventing the stories in them, filling new, empty pages with right words – I can’t do that. That’s a very different trade. A famous writer once wrote, ‘An author can be seen as three things: a storyteller, a teacher, or magician – but a magician, the enchanter, is in the ascendant.”

— Cornelia Funke

258. “And this time he would have said it, right? I love you. So much. Too much. But that was forbidden. For all time. The Elf would take his heart in payment.”

— Cornelia Funke

259. “Wood always remembers it was once a living tree, alive and breathing in both kingdoms, the one above and the one below.”

— Cornelia Funke

260. “There it was, that familiar fear, love’s terrible price.”

— Cornelia Funke

261. “He sought her lips as if he needed to breathe through her, as if only she could keep him from choking on his rage.”

— Cornelia Funke

262. “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

263. “Yesterday. Was there a more merciless word?”

— Cornelia Funke

264. “The road went ever more steeply downhill. Overhead, the branches of the trees intertwined. It was a still, windless morning, cloudy and damp.”

— Cornelia Funke

265. “Mortimer!” Orpheus produced a derisive smile, although with some difficulty. “Is your head buried so deep in your wine jug that you don’t know what’s going on in this world of yours? He’s not doing any reading now. The bookbinder prefers to play the outlaw these days – the role you created especially for him.”

— Cornelia Funke

266. “They were her home when she was somewhere strange. They were familiar voices, friends that never quarreled with her, clever, powerful friends – daring and knowledgable, 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 while Mo cut leather and fabric to the right size and re-stitched old pages that over countless years had grown fragile from the many fingers leafing through them.”

— Cornelia Funke

267. “If you’re going to start tonight there’s no time to waste. Certainly not enough time to finish your quarrel with this dim-witted mushroom-muncher.”

— Cornelia Funke

268. “Because by now Elinor had understood this, too: A longing for books was nothing compared with what you could feel for human beings. The books told you about that feeling. The books spoke of love, and it was wonderful to listen to them, but they were no substitute for love itself. They couldn’t kiss her like Meggie, they couldn’t hug her like Resa, they couldn’t laugh like Mortimer. Poor books, poor Elinor.”

— Cornelia Funke

269. “She was gone. And his heart was beating too loud and too fast. Into nothingness.”

— Cornelia Funke

270. “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

271. “Everyone living around this lake thinks I’m crazy, and if we go back to the police with this story, then the news that Elinor Loredan has finally flipped will be all over the place. Which just goes to show that a passion for books is extremely unhealthy.”

— Cornelia Funke

272. “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

273. “Never develop a passion you can’t afford. It’ll eat your heart away like a bookworm.”

— Cornelia Funke

274. “What terrible human presumption it is to catch other living creatures and hold them captive!”

— Cornelia Funke

275. “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

276. “The unicorns lifted their heads. Of course they weren’t white. Why were things in this world always white-washed? Their hides were brown and grey, mottled black, and pale yellow like the autumn sun drifting through the damp fog above.”

— Cornelia Funke

277. “But his heart, strangely enough, told him something else.”

— Cornelia Funke

278. “Only to be expected!′ Elinor’s voice almost cracked. Belligerent as a Bull Terrier, she marched up to him.”

— Cornelia Funke

279. “After all, that was what you wanted from books: great emotions you’d never felt yourself, pain you could leave behind by closing the book if it got too bad. Death and destruction felt deliciously real conjured up with the right words, and you could leave them behind between the pages as you pleased, at no cost or risk to yourself.”

— Cornelia Funke

280. “He pressed his fist to where his heart had once beaten, and I did the same. I’m sure I looked like a total idiot, but I think we all do when we’re really happy. Except for Longspee. He just looked fabulous being happy.”

— Cornelia Funke

281. “Love is always a prison.”

— Cornelia Funke

282. “To never let the other forget who they are – love is also about that.”

— Cornelia Funke

283. “Nonsense!” she shouted. “Where are you going to go? We all belong together. Your problems are our problems.”

— Cornelia Funke

284. “An author can be seen as three things: a storyteller, a teacher or a magician – but the magician, the enchanter is in the ascendant.”

— Cornelia Funke

285. “The wrong boy. But what did the heart care about that?”

— Cornelia Funke

286. “If ye see the laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him and his house, byre and stable, man, guest and master, wife, miss, or bairn – black, black be their fall.” Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped.”

— Cornelia Funke

287. “Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows.”

— Cornelia Funke

288. “Love is a deadly affair.”

— Cornelia Funke

289. “Victor,” he asked, “what do adults do all day?” “Work,” Victor answered, “eat, shop, pay bills, use the phone, read newspapers, drink coffee, sleep.”

— Cornelia Funke

290. “They have become so lost in their own darkness that they see nothing but darkness in everything.”

— Cornelia Funke

291. “Jealousy still gave him a pang. The heart was a stupid thing.”

— Cornelia Funke

292. “Well, one thing’s for sure, they’re very strange names, and that’s putting it mildly.”

— Cornelia Funke

293. “We will never have the wealth of experience our immortal creators have. Yet I find comfort in the thought that this limited lifespan gives our minds, at times, refreshing freedom.”

— Cornelia Funke

294. “Happy was not a word Nerron usually used to describe himself. It was, in his eyes, an emotional state only possible when paired with stupidity.”

— Cornelia Funke

295. “Do you remember the sound my heart made when it broke?”

— Cornelia Funke

296. “It sounded as if his mother were breaking into small pieces, such tiny pieces that no one would ever be able to put her together again. But he wanted to keep her!”

— Cornelia Funke

297. “He had lived in Venice for more than fifteen years and he still didn’t know all the city’s nooks and crannies – but then again no one did.”

— Cornelia Funke

298. “I don’t know much about killing, but for you I’d learn!”

— Cornelia Funke

299. “The Hartliebs had no time for the snow. Outside their window, San Giorgio Maggiore seemed to be floating on the lagoon as if it had just surfaced there. The view was so beautiful that Victor felt his heart ache. Esther and her husband, however, stood side by side with their backs to the window.”

— Cornelia Funke

300. “He closed the window, and the scents of the past again flooded the room, like a bunch of wilted flowers.”

— Cornelia Funke