“Woman!" said the litle man testily. "Get out of my light. You are interfering with my reserarch!"You and your research!" said the woman. "Who cares about that? The important thing is my health elixir. Those two outside are in urgent need of it.""Those two," said the man irritably, "will be far more in need of my help and advice.""Maybe so," said the little woman. "But not until they are well. Move over, old man!"...Atreyu cleared his throat to call attention to his presence..."He's already well," said the little man. "Now it's my turn.""Certainly not! the little woman hissed. "He'll be well when I say so. It'll be your turn when I say it's your turn.”

“I see you are looking at my feet," he said to her when car was in motion."I beg your pardon?" said the woman."I said I see you're looking at my feet"."I beg your pardon. I happened to be looking at the floor," said the woman, and faced the doors of the car."If you want to look at my feet, say so," said the young man. "But don't be a God-damned sneak about it.""Let me out here, please," the woman said quickly to the girl operating the car.The car doors opened and the woman got out without looking back."I have two normal feet and I can't see the slightest God-damned reason why anybody should stare at them," said the young man.”

“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.”

“It's asking us our names," Falkor reported."I'm Atreyu!" Atreyu cried."I'm Falkor!" cried Falkor.The boy without a name was silent.Atreyu looked at him, then took him by the hand and cried: "He's Bastian Balthazar Bux!""It asks," Falkor translated, "why he doesn't speak for himself.""He can't," said Atreyu. "He has forgotten everything."Falkor listened again to the roaring of the fountain."Without memory, it says, he cannot come in. The snakes won't let him through."Atreyu replied: "I have stored up everything he told us about himself and his world. I vouch for him."Falkor listened."It wants to know by what right?""I am his friend," said Atreyu.”

“When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them 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.”

“My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college. After college, I called him long distance and said, now what?My dad didn't know.When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance, I said, now what? My dad didn't know, so he said, get married.I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need.”

“No," he said in his deep, rumbling voice. "It means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult.""What I really and truly want? What do you mean by that?""It's your own deepest secret and you yourself don't know it.""How can I find out?""By going the way of your wishes, from one to another, from first to last. It will take you to what you really and truly want.""That doesn't sound so hard," said Bastian."It is the most dangerous of all journeys.""Why?" Bastian asked. "I'm not afraid.""That isn't it," Grograman rumbled. "It requires the greatest honesty and vigilance, because there's no other journey on which it's so easy to lose yourself forever.”