Quotes by Michael Ende

“All the worlds misfortunes stemmed from the countless untruths, both deliberate and unintentional, which people told because of haste or carelessness.”

“In their view, even leisure time had to be used to the full, so as to extract the maximum of entertainment and relaxation with the minimum of delay.”

“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.”

“Life holds one great but quite commonplace mystery. Though shared by each of us and known to all, seldom rates a second thought. That mystery, which most of us take for granted and never think twice about, is time.”

“The odd thing was that, no matter how much time he saved, he never had any to spare; in some mysterious way, it simply vanished.”

“Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it.”

“All the beasts in Howling Forest were safe in their caves, nests, and burrows.”

“Guido clung to this thought like a drowning man clutching at a straw. He was rich and famous now, he told himself, and wasnt that what hed always dreamed of?”

“Those who still think listening isnt an art should see if they can do it half as well.”

“Time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart.”

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.

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.

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.

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

Its asking us our names, Falkor reported.Im Atreyu! Atreyu cried.Im Falkor! cried Falkor.The boy without a name was silent.Atreyu looked at him, then took him by the hand and cried: Hes Bastian Balthazar Bux!It asks, Falkor translated, why he doesnt speak for himself.He cant, 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 wont 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.

Hes a good old sort. If only he werent plumb crazy!

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.

Nothing is lost. . .Everything is transformed.

... Up until then he had always wanted to be someone other than he was, but he didnt want to change.

Nothing can change for them, because they themselves cant change anymore.