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.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that the surface story we see may hide deeper, evolving narratives beneath it.
Cornelia Funke's quote reflects on the layers of storytelling, suggesting that while the narrative presented in a book may seem static, it actually represents a dynamic world filled with growth and change beneath its surface. Just as in our lives, these underlying themes and experiences continuously evolve, enriching our understanding and interpretation of the narrative over time.
In practice
In a book club, we discussed the quote to analyze how characters develop.
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.
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.
Children are caterpillars and adults are butterflies. No butterfly ever remembers what it felt like being a caterpillar.
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?
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?
Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.
For a lot of readers these days, a book is something you have to agree or disagree with. But you can't agree with a novel. For my generation, it was assumed that a book is a dramatic thing, that the eye of the book is not telling you what to think.
I'm not sure that it's possible to write a novel about people who don't transgress or stumble, people who don't surprise themselves with the things they do, people who can explain all their actions with perfect logical consistency. At least it's not possible for me to write that sort of novel.
Until the 20th century it was generally assumed that a writer had said what he had to say in his works.
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as 'other.'
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