“He rubbed at the dirt furiously, making the circle disappear, and begged God to do the same thing to him. Just open up the ground and swallow him whole. Because if he couldn't go on living in His image, then he didn't want to go on living at all. But the ground didn't open and he wasn't swallowed up by the dirt, maybe because even unnatural things were created in God's image.”

“They're just words, he told himself, they don't matter. But he knew that wasn't completely true. The words themselves were only part of the problem; the worst part was what the words conveyed. They told everyone that Michael was someone who should be singled out because he was...sick and repulsive. He had heard those words all his life, but each time was like the first, a jagged knife cutting through innocence. He simply didn't know how much longer he could take it.”

“Reluctantly Bastian's thoughts turned back to reality. He was glad the Neverending Story had nothing to do with that.He didn't like books in which dull, cranky writers describe humdrum events in the very humdrum lives of humdrum people. Reality gave him enough of that kind of thing, why should he read about it? Besides, he couldn't stand it when a writer tried to convince him of something. And these humdrum books, it seemed to him, were always trying to do just that.Bastian liked books that were exciting or funny, or that made him dream. Books where made-up characters had marvelous adventures, books that made him imagine all sorts of things.Because one thing he was good at, possibly the only thing, was imagining things so clearly that he almost saw and heard them.”

“He bent down, scratched the black dirt into his fingers. He was beginning to warm to it; the words were beginning to flow. No one in front of him was moving. He said, "This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something. Here's a place to build a home. It isn't the land--there's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me, we're worth something more than the dirt. I never saw dirt I'd die for, but I'm not asking you to come join us and fight for dirt. What we're all fighting for, in the end, is each other.”

“God reminded me how beautiful we all are to Him, after all, we were created in His own image, and He looks at me, at you, in all our sweat and dirt and brokenness, and says, "I choose you. You are beautiful.”

“He tried to remember Moon Child's eyes, but was no longer able to. He was sure of only one thing: that her glance had passed through his eyes and down into his heart. He could still feel the burning trail it had left behind. That glance, he felt, was embedded in his heart, and there it glittered like a mysterious jewel. And in a strange and wonderful way it hurt.Even if Bastian had wanted to, he couldn't have defended himself against this thing that had happened to him. However, he didn't want to. Oh no, not for anything in the world would he have parted with that jewel. All he wanted was to go on reading, to see Moon Child again, to be with her.IT never occurred to him that he was getting into the most unusual and perhaps the most dangerous of adventures. But even if he had known this, he wouldn't have dreamed of shutting the book.”

“God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that he really is. This is what it means to be created in the image of God.”