The Neverending Story

I'm reading The Neverending Story by Michael Ende and I'm wondering why it has taken me 29 years to get around to this fantastic tale. Of course the movie is a childhood classic that I watched countless times growing up, but being a lover of the "fantasy" genre, I'm absolutely enjoying the book just as much as I did the film. I'm not far in, so I'm sure my affection will only grow, and when you encounter a passage like that which follows and you know the writer comes from the same internal place as you, you know it will be extremely difficult to read the final words, whether they are happy or sad.  

If you have never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger –

If you have never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well-meaning person has switched off the lamp on the plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up so early –

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 to 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 no been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next. 

- The Neverending Story by Michael Ende 

Needless to say, I completely understand why Bastian did what he did! 

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