Cornelia Funke
I always wanted to ride a dragon myself, so I decided to do this for a year in my imagination.Collection: Imagination
They are shooting The Thief Lord in Venice at the moment.
I have two Iceland horses, a very hairy dog called Looney, and a guinea pig.
Yes, I always imagined living in other places.
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.
A library book, I imagine, is a happy book.
Every reader knows about the feeling that characters in books seem more real than real people.
Second, there are so many magical places in books that you can't go to, like Hogwarts and Middle Earth, so I wanted to set a story in a place where children can actually go.
I always thought it hadn't influenced me very much, but I heard from many people from England that many motives from German fairytales are to be found in my books.
And I plan to write a sequel to Dragon Rider.
And my father always took me to the library. We were both book addicts.
My grandmother told stories; she was very good at that.
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.
My daughter, Anna, is almost 15, and my son, Ben, is almost 10.
I love to read aloud.
Oh, I think every author is inspired by all of the books that she reads.
I like to visit my horse, have a walk with my dog.
I love to read, I love to watch movies, and I love to be with my children.
My son always says I like very weird music.
I like a composer called Henry Purcell, and I love to listen to Neil Young.
There are not so many mythical creatures from Inkheart.
I don't like to eat the same dish every day, so I read very different things.
I will try to write books until I drop dead.
I wish I had more time to visit schools.
Every German child learns to speak English in school.
I live in Hamburg; that's in the north. And I live on the outskirts of town. It looks like countryside.
I just did a picture book called The Wildest Brother on Earth, and you will find both of my children in there.
Everything gets to me. I'm very sentimental.
You know what they say: When people start burning books they'll soon burn human beings.Collection: Book
The world was a terrible place, cruel, pitiless, dark as a bad dream. Not a good place to live. Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness - and love. Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly.Collection: Dream
A reader doesn't really see the characters in a story; he feels them.Collection: Character
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.Collection: Inspirational
Nothing is more frightening than a fear you cannot name.Collection: Names
Children are caterpillars and adults are butterflies. No butterfly ever remembers what it felt like being a caterpillar.Collection: Children
a book always keeps something of its owner between its pages.Collection: Book
Books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them.Collection: Book
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 awayCollection: Book
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.Collection: Real
She pressed her hand against her chest. No heart. So where did the love she felt come from?Collection: Heart
Why do grown-ups think it's easier for children to bear secrets than the truth? Don't they know about the horror stories we imagine to explain the secrets?Collection: Children
Hope. Nothing is more intoxicating.Collection: Inkdeath
If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Flower
Nothing is more terrifying than fearlessness.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Women
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?Collection: Real
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.Collection: Book
The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure.Collection: Sea
The truth's not pretty of course. No one likes to look it in the face.Collection: Looks
The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages.Collection: Book