# Quote — Walter Moers, The City Of Dreaming Books

> It’s not a story for people with thin skins and weak nerves, whom I would advise to replace this book on the pile at once and slink off to the children’s section. Shoo! Be gone, you cry-babies and quaffers of chamomile tea, you wimps and softies! This book tells of a place where reading is still a genuine adventure, and by adventure I mean the old-fashion definition of the word that appears in the Zamonian dictionary: ‘A daring enterprise undertaken in a spirit of curiosity or temerity, it is potentially life-threatening, harbours unforeseeable dangers and sometimes proves fatal.’
>
> Yes, I speak of a place where reading can drive people insane. Where books may injure and poison them – indeed, even kill them. Only those who are thoroughly prepared to take such risks in order to read this book – only those willing to hazard their lives in so doing – should accompany me to the next paragraph. The remainder I congratulate on their wise but yellow-bellied decision to stay behind. Farewell, you cowards! I wish you a long and boring life, and, on that note, bid you goodbye!

- Author: [Walter Moers](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-moers.md)
- Book: [The City Of Dreaming Books](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-moers/the-city-of-dreaming-books.md)
- Page: 9
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walter_Moers#The_City_of_Dreaming_Books_(2004)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-moers/the-city-of-dreaming-books/its-not-a-story

## More from this book

> “No, literature isn’t eternal,” he cried. “It’s a thing of the moment. Even if you made books with pages of steel and diamond letters, they would some day crash into the sun and melt, together with our planet. Nothing is eternal, least of all in art. It doesn’t matter how long an author’s work continues to glimmer after his death. What matters is how brightly it burns while he’s still alive.”

p. 368 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-moers/the-city-of-dreaming-books/no-literature-isnt.md)

> But his illness never attained the merciful degree of severity that would have entitled him to a spell in a lunatic asylum and absolve him from further work. It wasn’t quite severe enough for a lunatic; only for a writer.

p. 339 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-moers/the-city-of-dreaming-books/but-his-illness.md)

> Many people may think it is insane of someone endowed with such a potential abundance of power to spend his life producing works of art which no one can see. Well, my own ideas of morality prescribe that only a lunatic would aspire to subordinate the fate of others to his own wishes. I leave it to a higher authority to decide which view is the right one.

p. 426 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/walter-moers/the-city-of-dreaming-books/many-people-may.md)