Michael Ende

Michael Ende
Michael Andreas Helmuth Endewas a German writer of fantasy and children's fiction. He is best known for his epic fantasy The Neverending Story; other famous works include Momo and Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer. His works have been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 35 million copies, and adapted as motion pictures, stage plays, operas and audio books. Ende is one of the most popular and famous German authors of the 20th century, mostly due to...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth12 November 1929
CountryGermany
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.
Those who still think that listening isn’t an art should see if they can do it half as well.
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.
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.
Cemented into the floor beside the windows were a number of tables with such spindly single legs and tiny tops that they looked like toadstools. They were just the right height for grown-up to eat at standing up - which was fortunate, since there were no chairs.
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.
Those who still think listening isn't an art should see if they can do it half as well.
She became so important to them that they wondered how they had ever managed without her in the past. And the longer she stayed with them the more indispensable she became, so indispensable in fact that their one fear was that she might some day move on.
She would sit by herself in the middle of the old stoe amphitheatre, with the sky's starry vault overhead, and simply listen to the great silence around her.
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 wasn't that what he'd always dreamed of?
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.
Maybe all the people who say ghosts don't exist are just afraid to admit that they do.
I wonder, 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.