Der Schrecksenmeister Quotes

“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

“This is wine," Ghoolion said solemnly. "Wine is drinkable sunlight. It's the most glorious summer's day imaginable, captured in a bottle. Wine can be a melody in a cut-glass goblet, but it can also be a cacophony in a dirty tumbler, or a rainy autumn night, or a funeral march that scorches your tongue.”
― Walter Moers, Der Schrecksenmeister

“Verlass dich nie auf die Ehrhaftigkeit eines anderen!”
― Walter Moers, Der Schrecksenmeister

“That', Ghoolion said in a voice quivering with rage, 'is my dungeon for useless kitchen utensils. There's one such in every kitchen worthy of the name. Its inmates are kept there like especially dangerous patients in a mental institution.'
He reached into the cupboard and brought out an odd-looking implement.
'What cook', he cried, 'does not possess such a gadget, which can sculpt a radish into a miniature rose? I acquired it at a fair in one of those moments of mental derangement when life without a miniature-rose-cutting gadget seems unimaginable.'
He hurled the thing back into the darkness and brought out another.
'Or this here, which enables one to cut potatoes into spirals five yards long! Or this, a press for juicing turnips! Or this, a frying pan for producing rectangular omelettes!'
Ghoolion took gadget after gadget from the cupboard and held them under Echo's nose, glaring at them angrily.
'What induced me to buy all these? What can one do with potato spirals long enough to decorate a banqueting hall? What demented voice convinced me in a whisper that I might some day be visited by guests with an insatiable hankering for turnip juice, rectangular omelettes and potatoes five yards long?'
He Hurled the gadgets back into their dungeon with a look of disgust.
'Why, I ask myself, don't I simply chuck them all on to the rubbish dump? I'll tell you that too. I keep them for one reason alone: revenge! I keep them just as medieval princes kept their enemies on starvation rations. A quick death on a rubbish dump would be too merciful. No, let them languish in a gloomy dungeon, condemned to everlasting inactivity. That's the only condign punishment for a rectangular omelette pan!”
― Walter Moers, Der Schrecksenmeister