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
Children are caterpillars and adults are butterflies. No butterfly ever remembers what it felt like being a caterpillar.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote illustrates the transformation from childhood to adulthood, emphasizing the forgetfulness of past struggles.
The quote by Cornelia Funke highlights the natural progression of life, where children, likened to caterpillars, undergo significant changes as they grow into adults, represented as butterflies. It suggests that with personal growth and maturity, individuals often forget the challenges and experiences of their earlier years, reflecting on the beauty and complexity of transformation as one moves through different stages of life.
Themes
ChildrenAdultsTransformationGrowthForgetting
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a graduation speech to inspire students about their future transformations.
More from Cornelia Funke
All quotes βIs 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.
Cornelia FunkeRead
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
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
As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the way it all changed. Living turned me into nothing.
Haruki MurakamiRead
For it is the fate of a woman Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers Runnng through caverns of darkness.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowRead
You could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then.
Thomas HardyRead
The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not "get over" the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.
Elisabeth Kubler-RossRead
My life will be the best illustration of all my work.
Hans Christian AndersenRead
...the routine of life goes on, whatever happens, we do the same things, go through the little performance of eating, sleeping, washing. No crisis can break through the crust of habit.
Daphne Du MaurierRead