"If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless.

If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"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 anymore. But time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. And the more people saved, the less they had. "
— Michael Ende

"...it's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept. And then you start to hurry. You work faster and faster and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop--and still the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it.

You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else.

That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that's how it ought to be.

And all at once, before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. what's more, you aren't out of breath. That's important, too... (28-29)"
— Michael Ende (Momo)

"Bastion looked at the book.
'I wonder,' he said to himself, 'what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures, deeds and battles. And sometimes there are storms at sea, or it takes you to strange cities and countries. All those things are somehow shut in a book. Of course you have to read it to find out. But it's already there, that's the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it could be.'
Suddenly an almost festive mood came over him.
He settled himself down, picked up the book, opened it to the first page, and began to read..."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"You wish for something, you've wanted it for years, and you're sure you want it, as long as you know you can't have it. But if all at once it looks as though your wish might come true, you suddenly find yourself wishing you had never wished for any such thing."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"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."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"Once someone dreams a dream, it can't just drop out of existence. But if the dreamer can't remember it, what becomes of it? It lives on in Fantastica, deep under earth. There are forgotten dreams stored in many layers. The deeper one digs, the closer they are. All Fantastica rests on a foundation of forgotten dreams."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"Time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart."
— Michael Ende

"The Nothing is spreading," groaned the first. "It's growing and growing, there's more of it every day, if it's possible to speak of more nothing. All the others fled from Howling Forest in time, but we didn't want to leave our home. The Nothing caught us in our sleep and this is what it did to us."

"Is it very painful?" Atreyu asked.

"No," said the second bark troll, the one with the hole in his chest. "You don't feel a thing. There's just something missing. And once it gets hold of you, something more is missing every day. Soon there won't be anything left of us."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"And if someone felt that his life had been an utter failure, and that he himself was only one among millions of wholly unimportant people who could be replaced as easily as broken windowpanes, he would go and pour out his heart to Momo. And, even as he spoke, he would come to realize by some mysterious means that he was absolutely wrong: that there was only one person like himself in the whole world, and that, consequently, he mattered to the world in his own particular way.

Such was Momo's talent for listening."
— Michael Ende

"“Every real story is a never ending story.”"
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"If you have never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger--

If you have never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well-meaning person has switched off the lamp on the plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up so early--

If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless--

If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

""What will happen when my heart stops beating?" Momo asked.
"When that moment comes," said the professor, "time will stop for you as well. Or rather, you will retrace your steps through time, through all the days and nights, myths and years of your life, until you go out through the great, round, silver gate you entered by."
"What will I find on the other side?"
"The home of the music you've sometimes faintly heard in the distance, but by then you'll be part of it. You yourself will be a note in its mighty harmonies.""
— Michael Ende

"Bastian had climbed a dune of purplish-red sand and all around him he saw nothing but hill after hill of every imaginable color. Each hill revealed a shade or tint that occured in no other. The nearest was cobalt blue, another was saffron yellow, then came crimson red, then indigo, apple green, sky blue, orange, peach, mauve, turquoise blue, lilac, moss green, ruby red, burnt umber, Indian yellow, vermillion, lapis lazuli, and so on from horizon to horizon. And between the hill, separating color from color, flowed streams of gold and silver sand."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"There were doors that looked like large keyholes, others that resembled the entrances to caves, there were golden doors, some were padded and some were studded with nails, some were paper-thin and others as thick as the doors of treasure houses; there was one that looked like a giant's mouth and another that had to be opened like a drawbridge, one that suggested a big ear and one that was made of gingerbread, one that was shaped like an oven door, and one that had to be unbuttoned."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"“A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.” "
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

""You see, Momo... it's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept... And then you hurry. You work faster and faster, and every time you look up there seems to be just as much to sweep as before, and you try even harder…, and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop-and still the street stretches away in from of you." "
— Michael Ende

"“Nothing is lost. . .Everything is transformed.”"
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"Mi existencia es incomprensible y ridícula"
— Michael Ende (Mirror in the mirror)

""Nothing can happen more than once, but everything must happen one day; Over hill and dale, wood and stream, my dying voice will blow away. . .""
— Michael Ende

"„Es gibt ein großes und doch ganz alltägliches Geheimnis. Alle Menschen haben daran teil, jeder kennt es, aber die wenigsten denken je darüber nach. Die meisten Leute nehmen es einfach so hin und wundern sich kein bisschen darüber. Dieses Geheimnis ist die Zeit. Es gibt Kalender und Uhren, um sie zu messen, aber das will wenig sagen, denn jeder weiß, dass einem eine ganze Stunde wie eine Ewigkeit vorkommen kann, mitunter kann sie aber auch wie ein Augenblick vergehen – je nachdem, was man in dieser Stunde erlebt. Denn Zeit ist Leben. Und das Leben wohnt im Herzen.“"
— Michael Ende (Momo)

""I did everything wrong," he said. "I misunderstood everything. Moon Child gave me so much, and all I did with it was harm, harm to myself and harm to Fantastica."

Dame Eyola gave him a long look.

"No," she said. "I don't believe so. You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight. You went the long way around, but that was your way. And do you know why? Because you are one of those who can't go back until they have found the fountain from which springs the Water of Life. And that's the most secret place in Fantastica. There's no simple way of getting there."

After a short silence she added: "But every way that leads there is the right one."
— Michael Ende

"“Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can’t explain them, and those who haven’t known them have no understanding of them at all.”"
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"“You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise. . .”"
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"“He had been through a good deal in the course of the Great Quest — he had seen beautiful things and horrible things — but up until now he had not known that one and the same creature can be both, that beauty can be terrifying.”"
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"“There are many kinds of delusion.”"
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"“Wishes cannot be summoned up or kept away at will. They come from deeper within us than good or bad intentions. And they spring up unannounced.”"
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"“There were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.” "
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"Just as the setting sun turned the clouds to liquid gold."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"'When a person is only half an ass like me, and not a complete one, she senses certain things.'"
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"Its whole expanse was covered with tall, juicy grass, and when the wind blew, great waves passed over it with a sound like troubled water. (The Grassy Ocean)"
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"But that is another story, and will be told at another time."
— Michael Ende

"Man kann davon überzeugt sein, sich etwas zu wünschen - vielleicht jahrelang - solang man weiß, dass der Wunsch unerfüllbar ist. Steht man aber plötzlich vor der Möglichkeit, dass der Wunschtraum Wirklichkeit wird, dann wünscht man sich nur noch eins: Man hätte es sich nie gewünscht."
— Michael Ende (Die unendliche Geschichte)

"If you have never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well-meaning person has switched off the lamp on plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up early-

If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless-

If such things have not been part of your experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"Porque el tiempo es vida, y la vida nace en el corazón."
— Michael Ende

"“Strange as it may seem, horror loses its power to frighten when repeated too often.”"
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"“My will can control anything that’s empty.”"
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"“If you stop to think about it, you’ll have to admit that all the stories in the world consist essentially of twenty-six letters. The letters are always the same, only the arrangement varies. From letters words are formed, from words sentences, from sentences chapters, and from chapters stories.” "
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"...little creatures they were who seemed to have been blown from glass."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"Soon some of the plants were as big as fruit trees. There were fans of long emerald-green leaves, flowers resembling peacock tails with rainbow-colored eyes, pagodas consisting of sumperimposed unbrellas of violet silk. Thick stems were interwoven like braids. Since they were transparent, they looked like pink glass lit up from within. Some of the blooms looked like clusters of blue and yellow Japanese lanterns. And little by little, as the luminous night growths grew denser, they intertwined to form a tissue of soft light."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"And there in the snow lay the pictures, like jewels bedded in white silk. They were paper-thin sheets of colored transparent isin glass of every size and shape, some round, some square, some damaged, some intact, some as large as church windows, others as small as snuffbox miniatures."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)