Parenting & Family Quote by Cornelia Funke

A mother getting lovingly roasted by her kid is doing a lot of quiet cultural work here. Cornelia Funke, best known for conjuring strange worlds for young readers, drops a line that feels offhand but lands as a miniature manifesto: “weird” is not an accusation, it’s a family nickname for curiosity. The sentence is built on domestic reportage - “my son always says” - which shifts authority away from the famous author and onto the most brutally honest critic in any household. Children don’t flatter; they label. And labels, in a creative life, can either tighten into shame or loosen into identity.

The intent isn’t to brag about eclectic taste so much as to normalize it. Funke frames her difference through someone else’s observation, which softens any pretension. It’s an artist’s sleight of hand: she communicates openness to the unconventional without declaring herself “edgy.” The subtext is about the everyday training ground of imagination. If your parent’s playlist is weird, then weird becomes livable - a safe category, not a social risk. That matters coming from an author whose work often asks kids to trust the uncanny and take fantasy seriously.

Contextually, the quote reads like something from an interview meant to humanize a public figure. It’s also a small rebuke to cultural gatekeeping: taste isn’t a credential, it’s a relationship. Funke’s “weird music” becomes another portal, proof that the storyteller’s mind stays porous well past childhood.