The Neverending Story

by Michael Ende

It’s the sadness that has made me so heavy. That’s why I’m sinking. There’s no help.’

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 and bad, beautiful and ugly. Everything’s empty. Nothing is real. Nothing matters.’

If it’s to get well, it has to hurt. If it stopped hurting, your arm would be dead.’

It has to hurt, if its to heal.

‘Apparently you don’t move in scientific circles,

It's my scientific speciality.

beauty can be terrifying.

But, strange as it may seem, horror loses its power to frighten when repeated too often.

Fantastica has no borders?’

when you get to the human world, the Nothing will cling to you. You’ll be like a contagious disease that makes humans blind, so they can no longer distinguish between reality and illusion.

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.

‘When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you’ll help them persuade people to buy things they don’t need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them. Yes, you little Fantastican, big things will be done in the human world with your help, wars started, empires founded …’

‘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 Fantastica doesn’t exist. Maybe they will be able to make good use of you.’

He heard them saying: ‘Life is like that,’ but he couldn’t agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles.

But even the longest and darkest of nights passes sooner or later.

‘Only the right name gives beings and things their reality,’ she said. ‘A wrong name makes everything unreal. That’s what lies do.’

For one of Fantastica’s many strange laws decreed that no one could climb the Mountain of Destiny until the last successful climber had been utterly forgotten. Thus anyone who managed to climb it would always be the first.

In that moment Bastian made a profound discovery. 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.

‘The moment is forever,’

‘It always is forever,’

‘Now I see that my dying gives life and my living death, and both are good. Now I understand the meaning of my existence.

‘Only your wishes can guide you over the pathways of Fantastica,’ said Grograman. ‘You must go from wish to wish. What you don’t wish for will always be beyond your reach. That is what the words ‘far’ and ‘near’ mean in Fantastica. And wishing to leave a place is not enough. You must wish to go somewhere else and let your wishes guide you.’

‘It means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult.’

The second pedestrian was what is known in Fantastica as a headfooter. His head was connected directly with his long, thin legs, there being neither neck nor trunk. Headfooters are always on the go and have no fixed residence. As a rule, they roam about in swarms of many hundreds, but from time to time one runs across a loner. They feed on herbs and grasses. The one that was kneeling to Bastian looked young and red-cheeked.

‘No point in asking them,’ said the giggler. ‘They can’t tell you anything. One might, in a manner of speaking, call them the Know-Nothings.’

thought-propulsion was hard work, demanding intense and unbroken concentration.

One day it struck him that the Yskalnari lived together so harmoniously, not because they blended different ways of thinking, but because they were so much alike that it cost them no effort to form a community. Indeed, they were incapable of quarreling or even disagreeing, because they did not regard themselves as individuals. Thus there were no conflicts or differences to overcome, and it was just this sameness, this absence of stress that gradually came to pall on Bastian. Their gentleness bored him and the unchanging melody of their songs got on his nerves. He felt that something was lacking, something he hungered for, but he could not yet have said what it was.

Bastian, however, wanted to be an individual, a someone, not just one among others. He wanted to be loved for being just what he was.

‘Nothing is lost,’ she said. ‘Everything is transformed.’

the longing to be capable of loving.

there is a prophecy, which we seldom speak of, that sometime in the distant future humans will bring love to Fantastica. Then the two worlds will be one. But what that means I don’t know.’

So you’ll just have to find a forgotten dream, a picture that will guide you to the fountain. And to find that picture you will have to forget the one thing you have left: yourself. And that takes hard, patient work.

ZIGZAGGING unsteadily, scarcely able to control his feet, the boy who had no name took a few steps toward Atreyu. Then he stopped. Atreyu did nothing, but watched him closely. The wound in his chest was no longer bleeding.

‘AURYN is the door that Bastian has been looking for. He carried it with him from the start.

Because now he knew that 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.

Even in the hardest moments of his life he preserved a lightheartedness that made him smile and that comforted others.

‘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 go to Fantastica and come back. Like you. And they make both worlds well again.’

‘Every real story is a Neverending Story.’