Michael Ende Quotes

We are not as we were. Death has been our pentecost.

In nature, there is less death and destruction than death and transmutation.

I've always been obsessed with the art of transformation.

Everything possessed the power to transform itself, or else, and what meant more, to be transformed.

Transformations is the word. We can do the work of transformation only in the present moment

Change is never a loss - it is change only.

The moment of change is the only poem.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

One thing is certain. The old Piper Laurie is no more.

To change, to convert? Why bother?

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass. Change may be announced by a small ache, so that you think you're catching cold. Or you may feel a faint disgust for something you loved yesterday. It may even take the form of a hunger that peanuts won't satisfy. Isn't overeating said to be one of the strongest symptoms of discontent. And isn't discontent the lever of change?

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

For me, the key to longevity - and immortality, in a sense - has to do with transformation.

Look abroad thro' Nature's range. Nature's mighty law is change.

If we want everything to remain as it is, it will be necessary for everything to change.

Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with.

One has to shed one's old skin for a positive change.

It can be painful leaving parts of yourself behind. Change and shuffling off your previous skin is traumatic, but it can be done.

Only the phoenix rises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost.

Nothing retains its form; new shapes from old. Nature, the great inventor, ceaselessly contrives. In all creation, be assured, there is no death - no death, but only change and innovation; what we men call birth is but a different new beginning; death is but to cease to be the same. Perhaps this may have moved to that, and that to this, yet still the sum of things remains the same.

Everything teaches transition, transference, metamorphosis: therein is human power, in transference, not in creation; & therein is human destiny, not in longevity but in removal. We dive & reappear in new places.

The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision

Fire isn't always an element of destruction. Classical alchemical doctrine teaches that it also has dominion over another province: change.

The old must always make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the ruins of another. There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone.