“Reading is an intelligent way of not having to think.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Stealing from one author is plagiarism; from many authors, research.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Es kommt nicht darauf an, wie eine Geschichte anfängt. Auch nicht darauf, wie sie aufhört. Sondern auf das, was dazwischen passiert.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Writers are there to write, not experience things. If you want to experience things, become a pirate or a Bookhunter. If you want to write, write. If you can't find the makings of a story inside yourself, you won't find them anywhere.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“I will quote one sentence from this text, namely, the one with which it ended. It was also the sentence which finally dissolved the writer’s block that had inhibited the author from starting work. I have since used it whenever I myself have been gripped by fear of the blank sheet in front of me. It is infallible, and its effect is always the same: the knot unravels and a stream of words gushes out on to the virgin paper. It acts like a magic spell and I sometimes fancy it really is one. But, even if it isn’t the work of a sorcerer, it is certainly the most brilliant sentence any writer has ever devised. It runs: ‘This is where my story begins.’”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Lesen ist eine intelligente Methode, sich selber das Denken zu ersparen.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Someone with an obsession for arranging things in alphabetical order was an abcedist, whereas someone with an obsession for arranging them in reverse alphabetical order was a zyxedist.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Von den Sternen kommen wir, zu den Sternen gehen wir. Das Leben ist nur eine Reise in die Fremde.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Where shadows dim with shadows mate,
in caverns deep and dark.
Where old books dream of bygone days,
when they were wood and bark...”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“In my profession it isn’t a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money — it’s always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won’t be discovered for another hundred years? I’ll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“The problem is this: in order to make money- lots of money- we don't need flawless literary masterpieces. What we need is mediocre rubbish, trash suitable for mass consumption. More and more, bigger and bigger blockbusters of less and less significance. What counts is the paper we sell, not the words that are printed on it.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written, that's all.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“In tiefen, kalten, hohlen Räumen,
Wo Schatten sich mit Schatten paaren,
Wo alte Bücher Träume träumen,
Von Zeiten, als sie Bäume waren,
Wo Kohle Diamant gebiert,
Man weder Licht noch Gnade kennt,
Dort ist's, wo jener Geist regiert,
Den man den Schattenkönig nennt.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Ist es nicht absurd, daß einem die Erinnerung an gute zeiten viel eher die Tränen in die Augen treibt als die an schlechte?”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“There were adventure stories supplied with cloths for mopping your brow, thrillers containing pressed leaves of soothing valerian to be sniffed when the suspense became too great, and books with stout locks sealed by the Atlantean censorship authorities ("Sale permitted, reading prohibited!"). One shop sold nothing but 'half' works that broke off in the middle because their author had died while writing them; another specialised in novels whose protagonists were insects. I also saw a Wolperting shop that sold nothing but books on chess and another patronised exclusively by dwarfs with blond beards, all of whom wore eye-shades.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“An author owes a duty to the truth.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Die Neugier ist die mächtigste Antriebskraft im Universum, weil sie die beiden größten Bremskräfte im Universum überwinden kann: die Vernunft und die Angst.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Bücher erschaffen kannst du noch nicht", sagte der Schattenkönig, "aber umbringen kannst du sie schon. Bist du sicher, daß du nicht lieber Kritiker werden möchtest?”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Es war sogar etwas Tröstliches in dieser toten Welt, denn die Abwesenheit von Leben bedeutet auch die Abwesenheit von Gefahr. Alles Böse geht von den Lebenden aus.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Wenn es tatsächlich das Orm war, das diese Bücher so besonders machte, dann war ich süchtig nach diesem Stoff, süchtig nach jeder von ihm gesättigten Zeile. Essen? Nebensache. Waschen? Zeitverschwendung. Nur Lesen, Lesen, Lesen war wichtig.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Warum tötest du mich nicht?" fragte der Bücherjäger. "Du solltest eigentlich wissen", antwortete Homunkoloss, "daß es immer einen geben muß, der überlebt, damit er die Geschichte erzählen kann. Denn sonst gäbe es bald keine Geschichten mehr, um die Bücher zu füllen.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“I was in a bibliophile's Eylsium.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“-Otra cosa más, chico, que tienes que recordar: lo que importa no es cómo empieza una historia. Ni cómo termina.
-¿Entonces qué?
-Lo que pasa en medio.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“..als würde man die Tür zu einem alten Antiquariat aufreißen, als würde sich ein Sturm aus purem Bücherstaub erheben und einem der Moder von Millionen verrottender Folianten mitten ins Gesicht wehen.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Sometimes, in the course of my hopeless quest, I would pick up and dip into one of the ordinary books that lay strewn around the castle. Whenever I did, it seemed so insipid and insubstantial that I flew into a rage and hurled it at the wall after reading the first few sentences. I was spoilt for any other form of literature, and the mental torment I endured was comparable to the agony of unrequited love compounded by the withdrawal symptoms associated with a severe addiction.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Die Hitze entschlackt den Körper. Wenn du eine Weile in die Lava gestarrt hast, verwandelt sich dein gehirn in eine breiige Masse. Und du denkst an gar nichts mehr. Das empfinden wir als Erholung von unseren geistigen Aktivitäten.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Auch er stieg funkelnd empor im größten und schrecklichsten Feuer, das Buchheim je heimgesucht hatte. Er, der Brandstifter und Zündfunke, flog hinauf, um dort oben ein Stern zu werden und für alle Zeit hinabzustrahlen auf eine Welt, die zu eng war für einen so großen Geist wie ihn.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“If what I reading has the power to grip me, I can read under the most difficult circumstances.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Sie schufen ein Elixier, mit dem man Buchpapier parfümieren konnte, welches all diese beschriebenen Angstsymptome erzeugte, von der Gänsehaut bis hin zum Herzstillstand.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
“Er dachte bereits daran, in sein Gasthaus der Tränen zu gehen und sich dort aufzuhängen, an einem Strick aus Traumfäden.”
― Walter Moers, quote from The City of Dreaming Books
Walter Moers
Born place: in Mönchengladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Born date May 24, 1957
See more on GoodReads
“Traffic congestion is caused by vehicles, not by people in themselves.”
― Jane Jacobs, quote from The Death and Life of Great American Cities
“I'm a century old, an impossible age, and my brain has no anchor in the present. Instead it drifts, nearly always to the same shore. Today, as most days, it is 1962. The year I discovered love.”
― Meg Rosoff, quote from What I Was
“She was nearly seventy years old. There was no time left for regret or misgivings, no time for dreams of what might have been.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“governor’s office,” Diedrichson says solemnly without”
― Pam Jenoff, quote from The Kommandant's Girl
“What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, 'to kill time', i.e. to escape boredom.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, quote from The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1
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Three GuineasBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
