Everything gets to me. I'm very sentimental.
— Cornelia Funke
I live in Hamburg; that's in the north. And I live on the outskirts of town. It looks like countryside.
I will try to write books until I drop dead.
There are not so many mythical creatures from Inkheart.
I love to read, I love to watch movies, and I love to be with my children.
I love to read aloud.
My grandmother told stories; she was very good at that.
They are shooting The Thief Lord in Venice at the moment.
Every reader knows about the feeling that characters in books seem more real than real people.
If I was a book, I would like to be a library book, so I would be taken home by all different sorts of kids.
Yes, I always imagined living in other places.
Every German child learns to speak English in school.
I have two Iceland horses, a very hairy dog called Looney, and a guinea pig.
I like a composer called Henry Purcell, and I love to listen to Neil Young.
I like to visit my horse, have a walk with my dog.
My daughter, Anna, is almost 15, and my son, Ben, is almost 10.
And my father always took me to the library. We were both book addicts.
I always thought it hadn't influenced me very much, but I heard from many people from England that many motives from German fairytales are to be found in my books.
I always wanted to ride a dragon myself, so I decided to do this for a year in my imagination.
I just did a picture book called The Wildest Brother on Earth, and you will find both of my children in there.
I wish I had more time to visit schools.
I don't like to eat the same dish every day, so I read very different things.
My son always says I like very weird music.
Oh, I think every author is inspired by all of the books that she reads.
And I always read the English translation and always have conversations with my translator, for example about the names. I always have to approve it.
And I plan to write a sequel to Dragon Rider.
Second, there are so many magical places in books that you can't go to, like Hogwarts and Middle Earth, so I wanted to set a story in a place where children can actually go.
A library book, I imagine, is a happy book.
