What I've started I must finish. I've gone too far to turn back. Regardless of what may happen, I have to go forward.

For a while Bastian stood motionless. He was so stunned by what he had just heard that he couldn't decide what to do... What he had hoped was his ruin and what he had feared his salvation.

There are many kinds of delusion.

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, timesaving to make them identical.

Strange as it may seem, horror loses its power to frighten when repeated too often.

What I've started I must finish. I've gone too far to turn back. Regardless of what may happen, I have to go forward.

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.