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 →Words 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
Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Raymond ChandlerRead
An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.
Jane SmileyRead
A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.
Charles BaxterRead
Look, man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?
David Foster WallaceRead
We were trained as writers with the idea that literature is something that can change reality, that it's not just a very sophisticated entertainment but a way to act.
Mario Vargas LlosaRead