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 FunkeRead
Is there anything in the world better than words on the page? Magic signs, the voices of the dead, building blocks to make wonderful worlds better than this one, comforters, companions in loneliness. Keepers of secrets, speakers of the truth...all those glorious words.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Words have the power to create worlds and provide solace in solitude.
In this quote, Cornelia Funke celebrates the transformative power of words and literature. She emphasizes how words can serve as a refuge from loneliness, allowing readers to connect with the voices of others and explore imaginative worlds that provide comfort and companionship. Words are depicted as magical tools that unlock deeper truths and offer solace in difficult times.
Themes
WordsLiteratureImaginationComfortSolitude
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club meeting to discuss the impact of literature on our lives.
More from Cornelia Funke
All quotes βWords 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 FunkeRead
Children are caterpillars and adults are butterflies. No butterfly ever remembers what it felt like being a caterpillar.
Cornelia FunkeRead
She wanted to return to her dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don't dreams in fairy tales sometimes leave a token behind?
Cornelia FunkeRead
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?
Cornelia FunkeRead
Similar quotes
A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.
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I assume I don't need an introduction.
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In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have changed a little... But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.
Michael ChabonRead
Death of the Father would deprive literature of many of its pleasures. If there is no longer a Father, why tell stories? Doesn't every narrative lead back to Oedipus? Isn't storytelling always a way of searching for one's origin, speaking one's conflicts with the Law, entering into the dialectic of tenderness and hatred?
Roland BarthesRead
All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words.
Amy LowellRead