Michael Ende

He was handsome and strong, but somehow that wasn't enough for him. He also felt the need to be tough and inured to hardship... But how was he to come by that quality in this luminous garden, where all manner of fruit was to be had for the picking?

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All the games were selected for them by supervisors and had to have some useful, educational purpose. The children learned these new games but unlearned something else in the process: they forgot to be happy, how to take pleasure in little things and last, but not least, how to dream

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Momo would have been delighted, except that most of the newcomers had no idea how to play. All they did was sit around looking bored and sullen and watching Momo and her friends. Sometimes they deliberately broke up the other children's games and spoiled everything. Squabbles and scuffles were frequent, though these never lasted long because Momo's presence had its usual effect on the newcomers, too, so they soon started having bright ideas themselves and joining in with a will. The trouble was, new children turned up nearly every day, some of them from distant parts of the city, and one spoilsport was enough to ruin the game for everyone else. But there was another thing that Momo couldn't quite understand - a thing that hadn't happened until very recently. More and more often these days, children turned up with all kind of toys you couldn't really play with: remote-controlled tanks that trundled to and fro but did little else, or space rockets that whizzed around on strings but got nowhere, or model robots that waddled along with eyes flashing and heads swiveling but that was all. They were highly expensive toys such as Momo's friends had never owned, still less than Momo herself. Most noticeable of all, they were so complete, down to the tiniest detail, that they left nothing at all to the imagination. Their owners would spend hours watching them, mesmerized but bored, as they trundled, whizzed, and waddled along. Finally, when that palled, they would go back to the familiar old games in which a couple of cardboard boxes, a torn tablecloth, a molehill or a handful of pebbles were quite sufficient to conjure up a whole world of make believe.

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When you know as much as we do, nothing matters. Things just repeat. Day and night, summer and winter. The world is empty and aimless. Everything circles around. Whatever starts up must pass away,whatever is born must die. It all cancels out, good or bad, beautiful or ugly.

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When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.

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There are people who can never go to Fantastica, said Mr. Coreander, and others who can, but who stay there forever. And there are just a few who fo to fantastica and come back. Like you. And they make both world well again.

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What do you suppose it means?'[Bastian] asked. DO WHAT YOU WISH.' That must mean I can do anything I feel like. Don't you think so? All at once Grograman's face looked alarmingly grave, and his eyes glowed. 'No,' he said in his deep, rumbling voice. 'It means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult.' 'What I really and truly want? What do you mean by that?' 'It's your own deepest secret and you yourself don't know it.' 'How can I find out?' 'By going the way of your wishes, from one to another, from first to last. It will take you to what you really and truly want.' 'That doesn't sound so hard,' said Bastian. 'It's the most dangerous of all journeys.' 'Why?' Bastian asked. 'I'm not afraid.' 'That isn't it,' Grograman rumbled. 'It requires the greatest honesty and vigilance, because there's no other journey on which it's so easy to lose yourself forever.

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The human world is full of weak-minded people, who think they're as clever as can be and are convinced that it's terribly important to persuade even the children that Fanstastica doesn't exist.

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There are many kinds of joy, but they all lead to one: the joy to be loved.

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He had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed. He heard them saying: "Life is like that," but he couldn't agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles.

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You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise.

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Nothing can change for them, because they themselves can't change anymore.

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Nothing is lost. . .Everything is transformed.

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... Up until then he had always wanted to be someone other than he was, but he didn't want to change.

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It was a wonderful feeling, a sense of release and boundless freedom that he had never known before. He was beyond the reach of all the things that had weighed him down and hemmed him in.

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He's a good old sort. If only he weren't plumb crazy!

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It's asking us our names, Falkor reported.I'm Atreyu! Atreyu cried.I'm Falkor! cried Falkor.The boy without a name was silent.Atreyu looked at him, then took him by the hand and cried: He's Bastian Balthazar Bux!It asks, Falkor translated, why he doesn't speak for himself.He can't, said Atreyu. He has forgotten everything.Falkor listened again to the roaring of the fountain.Without memory, it says, he cannot come in. The snakes won't let him through.Atreyu replied: I have stored up everything he told us about himself and his world. I vouch for him.Falkor listened.It wants to know by what right?I am his friend, said Atreyu.

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What he had hoped for was his ruin and what he had feared his salvation.

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People never seemed to notice that, by saving time, they were losing something else. No one cared to admit that life was becoming ever poorer, bleaker and more monotonous. The ones who felt this most keenly were the children, because no one had time for them any more. But time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. And the more people saved, the less they had.

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One may enter the literary parlor via just about any door, be it the prison door, the madhouse door, or the brothel door. There is but one door one may not enter it through, which is the child room door. The critics will never forgive you such. The great Rudyard Kipling is one of a number of people to have suffered from this. I keep wondering to myself what this peculiar contempt towards anything related to childhood is all about.

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Quotes by Michael Ende