‘Every real story is a Neverending Story.’ He passed his eyes over the many books that covered the walls of his shop from floor to ceiling, pointed the stem of his pipe at them, and went on: ‘There are many doors to Fantastica, my boy. There are other such magic books. A lot of people read them without noticing. It all depends on who gets his hands

‘When someone crowns himself emperor, it simply vanishes. Obviously, because how, in a manner of speaking, can you use Moon Child’s power to take her power away from her?’

‘You can only wish as long as you remember your world. These people here used up all their memories. Without a past you can’t have a future. That’s why they don’t get older. Just look at them. Would you believe that some of them have been here a thousand years and more? But they stay just as they are. Nothing can change for them, because they

A person’s reason for doing someone a good turn matters as much as the good turn itself.

‘When a person is only half an ass like me, and not a complete one, she senses certain things.

‘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.’

‘Didn’t you know that Fantastica is the land of stories? A story can be new and yet tell about olden times. The past comes into existence with the story.’

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.

At that point the story began all over again — unchanged and unchangeable — and ended once again with the meeting between the Childlike Empress and the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, who began once again to write and tell the Neverending Story … … and so it would go on for ever and ever, for any change in the sequence of events was unthinkable.