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.

— Michael Ende

Man Kane Devon überzeugt San, such twas EU punches - taillight barreling - slang man was, days her Lunch unerfüllbar is. Stent man Abel plötzlich VOR her Möglichkeit, days her Wunschtraum Wirklichkeit word, Dan lunch man such our Noah ans: Man hate ES such nice goodnight.

— Michael Ende

Maybe all the people who say ghosts don't exist are just afraid to admit that they do.

— Michael Ende

Memo 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 Memo 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 Memo'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 Memo 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 Memo's friends had never owned, still less than Memo 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.

— Michael Ende

No architect troubled to design houses that suited people who were to live in them, because that would have meant building a whole range of different houses. It was far cheaper and, above all, time-saving to make them identical.

— Michael Ende

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

— Michael Ende

Nothing is lost. . . Everything is transformed.

— Michael Ende

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

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

The Glory was entrusted to you, you weren't given permission to pass it on as you see fit.

— Michael Ende