01UndatedBut the dream of something unlikely has its own special name. We call it hope.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
02UndatedIt was all too easy to make things up, it was like skating on thin ice, it was like doing dainty pirouettes on a brittle crust over water thousands of fathoms deep.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
03Undated... perhaps the clock hands had become so tired of going in the same direction year after year that they had suddenly begun to go the opposite way instead...Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
05UndatedA joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
06UndatedI didn't feel lonely until there was something to yearn for. Loneliness and longing are two sides of the same coin.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
07UndatedThus the 'fortune-teller' is trying to foresee something that is really quite unforeseeable. This is characteristic of all forms of foreseeing. And precisely because what they 'see' is so vague, it is hard to repudiate fortune-tellers' claims.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
08UndatedI've nothing against eye make-up and lipstick. But the fact is that we’re actually living on a planet in space. For me that’s an extraordinary thought. It’s mind-boggling just to think about the existence of space at all. But there are girls who can’t see the universe for eye liner.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
09UndatedAll a man can see while looking at the sky are cosmic fossils of thousands and millions of years ago. The only thing an astrologer can predict, is the past.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
10UndatedIt takes billions of years to create a human being. And it takes only a few seconds to die.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
11UndatedIn the eyeball there is a clash between creation and reflection. The two-way globes of sight are magical revolving doors where the creative spirit meets itself in the created spirit. The eye that surveys the universe is the universe's own eye.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
12UndatedWe can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions. Outer circumstances can constrain us. Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings. But we are just as much determined by inner potential and outer opportunities as the Stone Age boy on the Rhine, the lion in Africa, or the apple tree in the garden.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
13UndatedThe faculty of vision can vary from person to person. On the other hand, we can rely on what our reason tells us because that is the same for everyoneJostein Gaarder / quote ↗
14UndatedIf an overgrown child draws something on a piece of paper, you can't ask the paper what the drawing is supposed to represent.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
15UndatedSince the Renaissance, people have had to get used to living their life on a random planet in the vast galaxy.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
16UndatedWe cry when something is sad. Then we often shed a tear when something's beautiful as well. When something's funny or ugly, we laugh. Perhaps we are sad when something is beautiful because we know that it won't last for ever. Then, we start laughing when something is ugly because we understand that it's only a joke.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
17UndatedEven though God could create all kinds of things, he could hardly create himself before he had a "self" to create with. So there was only one possibility left: God had always existed. But she had already rejected that possibility! Everything that existed had to have a beginning.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
18UndatedActing responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
19UndatedWe don't learn anything there [school]. The difference between schoolteachers and philosophers us that school-teachers think they know a lot of stuff that they try to force down our throats. Philosophers try to figure things out together with the pupilsJostein Gaarder / quote ↗
20UndatedI never tried to ingratiate myself with great writers. When a great writer has nothing to say, he does something else, like chopping firewood. A great writer doesn't try to find something to write about, he only writes when he has to. I was no great writer. I've always had the need to unload my thoughts, and so had to live with a kind of mental incontinence, but I've never felt forced to write a novel. Nor, for that matter, have I ever chopped firewood.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
23UndatedI wonder whether the Christmas feeling has anything to do with the sixth sense. Perhaps we're a little more the angels at Christmas than we are during the rest of the year. And Christmas is about all the other senses. I can smell Christmas, I can taste Christmas, and I can see and hear it.Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
24UndatedThe story goes that one day Socrates stood gazing at a stall that sold allkinds of wares. Finally he said, “What a lot of things I don’t need!Jostein Gaarder / quote ↗
