Dust finger 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

Elinor had read countless stories in which the main characters fell sick at some point because they were so unhappy. She had always thought that a very romantic idea, but she’d dismissed it as a pure invention of the world of books. All those wilting heroes and heroines who suddenly gave up the ghost just because of unrequited love or longing for something they’d lost! Elinor had always enjoyed their sufferings—as a reader will. 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

For him that stealth, or borrowed and returned not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sings in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that diet not, and when at last he Goethe to his last punishment, let the flames of hell consume him for

— Cornelia Funke

He Salado ex profess con el into -nuncio-, puts hay RNA cost Que debs saber: candy el into see ousting en sugar con el fuel, NI yo MIMO Puerto Domenico. Pro me ha dado SU Calabria de honor de Que ESTA niche see Mahendra en calm y no nos stroppier la diversion.

— Cornelia Funke

He saw so many emotions mingled on her face: anger disappointment, fear – and defiance. Like her daughter, thought Folio again. So uncompromising, so strong. Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn’t break women. Instead, it wore them down, it hollowed them out, very slowly.

— Cornelia Funke

He wants to be grown-up. How different dreams can be! Nature will soon grant your wish.

— Cornelia Funke

How ridiculous that water ran out of your eyes when your heart hurt. Tragic heroines in books tended to be amazingly beautiful. Not a word about swollen eyes or a red nose. "Crying always gives me a red nose," thought Elinor. "I expect that's why I'll never be in any book.

— Cornelia Funke

I always used to read aloud to her in the evenings--

— Cornelia Funke

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

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