If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless. If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the deep emotional connection people have with stories and characters, highlighting the grief of losing them.
This quote expresses the profound impact that stories and their characters can have on our lives. It suggests that true appreciation for literature comes from emotional investment in the narrative, resulting in feelings of sorrow when that journey comes to an end. The experience of loss in this context underscores how integral these stories are to our understanding of life and emotion.
In practice
During a book club meeting discussing the ending of a beloved series.
When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts ... Who knows what use they’ll make of you? Maybe you’ll help them to 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.
Momo listened to everyone and everything - even to the rain and the wind and the pine trees - and all of them spoke to her after their own fashion.
Once someone dreams a dream, it can't just drop out of existence. But if the dreamer can't remember it, what becomes of it? It lives on in Fantastica, deep under earth. There are forgotten dreams stored in many layers. The deeper one digs, the closer they are. All Fantastica rests on a foundation of forgotten dreams.
Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it.
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. Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it. Time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart.
One of the things that happens in novels it's almost like a continual debate with yourself. That's why you're writing the book. It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.
The artist appeals to that part of our being...which is a gift and not an acquisition - and, therefore, more permanently enduring.
What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.
Architecture depends on facts, but its real field of activity lies in the realm of the significance.
I'm always aware of the camera and it feels like that's the audience.
There are so many separate selves; no one who writes creatively hasn't felt that.
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