Michael Ende Quotes

I remember thinking I couldn't be bothered to feel any emotions any more.

Depressive lucidity, usually described as a radical withdrawal from ordinary human concerns, generally manifests itself by a profound indifference to things which are genuinely of minor interest. Thus it is possible to imagine a depressed lover, while the idea of a depressed patriot seems frankly inconceivable.

Is boredom anything less than the sense of one's faculties slowly dying?

My nervous system is a shattered wreck, and I am absolutely bored and listless save when I come upon something which peculiarly interests me.

It was not the thought that I was so unloved that froze me. I had taught myself to do without love. It was not the thought that God was cruel that froze me. I had taught myself never to expect anything from Him. What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction. What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity. Now even that had flickered out.

Sometimes, when you're really depressed, all you want to do is nothing. All you want to do is lean your head on your arm, and stare into space. Sometimes this can go on for hours. If you're unusually depressed, you may have to change arms.

I am so fed up and joyless that not only have I nothing to fill my soul, I cannot even conceive of anything that could possibly satisfy it - alas, not even the bliss of heaven.

Boredom is a terrible affliction of the soulless.

My own apathy is bone chilling.

Apathy is the self-defense of the powerless.

Sunday neurosis, that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest.

I can’t seem to make myself care about anything to the right or left of the present.

I found myself losing interest in almost everything, I didn't want to do any of the things I had previously wanted to do and I didn't know why. Everything there was to do seemed like too much work. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment.

But the same things that had once attracted menow left me with a mild sense of unease. Ivy would say I was getting smarter, but I just felt…empty.

Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.

Sometimes I didn't even feel like getting out of bed. I took to wearing my days-of-the-week panties out of order. It could be Monday and I'd have on underwear saying Thursday. I just didn't care.

There’s only one thing worse than not satisfying a desire. And that is not to feel any desire.

I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature.

I don't really care. I shouldn't have to care. I shouldn't have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.

It's an apathy so absolute that it's like a hole you might fall in.

Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.

I'm half alive but I feel mostly dead.

I said 'It can't go on' and he said 'No, it can't.' Honestly, I don't think I could have mattered less to him by then. But by then, nothing mattered to him.

Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.