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The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4) QUOTES

The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4) QUOTES

1 " Es kommt nicht darauf an, wie eine Geschichte anfängt. Auch nicht darauf, wie sie aufhört. Sondern auf das, was dazwischen passiert. "

― Walter Moers , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

2 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

3 " Reading is an intelligent way of not having to think. "

― Walter Moers , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

4 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

5 " Stealing from one author is plagiarism; from many authors, research. "

― Walter Moers , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

6 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

7 " Von den Sternen kommen wir, zu den Sternen gehen wir. Das Leben ist nur eine Reise in die Fremde. "

― Walter Moers , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

8 " Lesen ist eine intelligente Methode, sich selber das Denken zu ersparen. "

― Walter Moers , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

9 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

10 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

11 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

12 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

13 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

14 " There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written, that's all. "

― Walter Moers , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

15 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

16 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

17 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

18 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

19 " An author owes a duty to the truth. "

― Walter Moers , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)

20 " 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 , The City of Dreaming Books (Zamonia, #4)