Walter Moers > Quotes

“Reading is an intelligent way of not having to think.”
― Walter Moers, The City of Dreaming Books

“Stealing from one author is plagiarism; from many authors, research.”
― Walter Moers, The City of Dreaming Books

“Wednesdays were the best thing about Atlantis. The middle of the week was a traditional holiday there. Everyone stopped work and celebrated the fact that half the week was over.”
― Walter Moers, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

“Lest soviel ihr könnt! Lest Straßenschilder und Speisekarten, lest die Anschläge im Bürgermeisteramt, lest von mir aus Schundliteratur - aber lest! Lest! Sonst seid ihr verloren!”
― Walter Moers, Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures

“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

“Life is too precious to be left to chance”
― Walter Moers, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

“Anyone can write. Some people can write a bit better than others; they're called authors. Then there are some who can write better than authors; they're called artists.”
― Walter Moers

“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

“Es kommt nicht darauf an, wie eine Geschichte anfängt. Auch nicht darauf, wie sie aufhört. Sondern auf das, was dazwischen passiert.”
― Walter Moers, Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher

“No one who writes a good book is really dead.”
― Walter Moers

“Lesen, lesen, immer nur lesen und darüber die eigene erbärmliche Existenz vergessen!”
― Walter Moers, Das Labyrinth der Träumenden Bücher

“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

“Lesen ist eine intelligente Methode, sich selber das Denken zu ersparen.”
― Walter Moers, The City of Dreaming Books

“Ordinary folk prefer familiar tastes - they'd sooner eat the same things all the time - but a gourmet would sample a fried park bench just to know how it tastes.”
― Walter Moers

“On horseback you feel as if you're moving in time to classical music; a camel seems to progress to the beat of a drum played by a drunk.”
― Walter Moers, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

“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

“A bluebear has twenty-seven lives. I shall recount thirteen-and-a-half of them in this book but keep quiet about the rest. A bear must have his secrets, after all; they make him seem attractive and mysterious.”
― Walter Moers, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

“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

“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

“I never trained, however, because I was a spontaneous talent. Practising spoiled my style.”
― Walter Moers, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

“never trust a Troglotroll”
― Walter Moers

“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

“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

“Picture to yourself the most beautiful girl imaginable! She was so beautiful that there would be no point, in view of my meagre talent for storytelling, in even trying to put her beauty into words. That would far exceed my capabilities, so I'll refrain from mentioning whether she was a blonde or a brunette or a redhead, or whether her hair was long or short or curly or smooth as silk. I shall also refrain from the usual comparisons where her complexion was concerned, for instance milk, velvet, satin, peaches and cream, honey or ivory, Instead, I shall leave it entirely up to your imagination to fill in this blank with your own ideal of feminine beauty.”
― Walter Moers, The Alchemaster's Apprentice: A Culinary Tale from Zamonia by Optimus Yarnspinner

“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

“Hexen stehen immer zwischen Birken”
― Walter Moers

“Knowledge is night!”
― Walter Moers, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

“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

“I had dispensed with a rudder on the principal that fate must be given a chance.”
― Walter Moers, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear

“I now understood the secret of music and knew what makes it so infinitely superior to all the other arts: its incorporeality. Once it has left an instrument it becomes its own master, a free and independent creature of sound, weightless, incorporeal and perfectly in tune with the universe.”
― Walter Moers