Never Ending Story book quote

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 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."
pp 6-7, English translation, 1983, Doubleday & Company, Inc.