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

Categorized in : Thinking Stories Twenties

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.

Michael Ende

calendars eternity littles

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

Michael Ende

eye wise beautiful

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 ... Who knows what use they’ll make of you? Maybe you’ll help them to 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.

Michael Ende

hate lying people

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

Michael Ende

kind joy

Nothing is lost. . .Everything is transformed.

Michael Ende

lost-everything transformed lost

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

never-ending-story wish spring

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?

Michael Ende

never-ending-story dream remember

My will can control anything that’s empty.

Michael Ende

empty

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

manipulation deceit lying

One day, you don't feel like doing anything. Nothing interests you, everything bores you. Feel more and more empty inside, more and more dissatisfied with yourself and the world in general. Then even that feeling wears off, and you don't feel anything anymore. You become completely indifferent to what goes on around you... You forget how to laugh and cry - you're cold inside and incapable of loving anything or anyone... There's no going back... The disease has a name. It's called deadly tedium.

Michael Ende

bores-you names laughing

To be wise was to be above joy and sorrow, fear and pity, ambition and humiliation. It was to hate nothing and to love nothing, and above all to be utterly indifferent to the love and hate of others.

Michael Ende

hate ambition wise

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

able joy world

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

distance home heart

A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.

Michael Ende

never-ending-story stories past

Momo listened to everyone and everything - even to the rain and the wind and the pine trees - and all of them spoke to her after their own fashion.

Michael Ende

fashion rain wind

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

heart mean people

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

left missing feels

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.

Michael Ende

doors numbers children

Without a past you can't have a future.

Michael Ende

past

All that matters in life," the grey man went on, "is to climb the ladder of success, amount to something, own things. When a person climbs higher than the rest, amounts to more, owns more things, everything else comes automatically: friendship, love, respect, et cetera..." "Isn't there anyone who loves you?" Momo whispered.

Michael Ende

friendship-love love-you men