Quotes from Jostein Gaarder

Every single morning I wake with a bang,' he said. 'It's as though the fact that I am alive is injected into me; I am a character in a fairytale, bursting with life.

The 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!

I think about my editor when I write. She's a good friend, too.

It is by no means certain that we advance our philosophical quest by reading Plato or Aristotle. It may increase our knowledge of history but not of the world.

The one who says he doesn't understand anything about art, doesn't know himself.

Life consists of a long chain of coincidences.

Life is like a huge lottery in which only the winning tickets are visible.

We are the living planet!

But she'd managed to find her way into our reality, perhaps because she had an important mission here, perhaps because she was here to save us from what people call the monotony of life.

There is always Joker to see through the delusion. Generation succeeds generation, but there is a fool walking the earth who is never ravaged by time.

To wonder about life is not something we learn; it is something we forget.

We are thrown together with a sprinkling of stardust.

There are five billion people living on this planet. But you fall in love with one particular person, and you won't swap her for any other.

Love, your own witch-daughter, Queen of the Mirror and the Highest Protector of Irony

The soul yearns to fly home on the wings of love to the world of ideas. It longs to be freed from the chains of the body.

Wisest is she who knows she does not know.

Life is both sad and solemn. We are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other---and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.

A 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.

How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living.

When you realize there is something you don't understand, then you're generally on the right path to understanding all kinds of things.

It's not a silly question if you can't answer it.

Dear Hilde, if the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we would still be so stupid that we couldn't understand it. Love, Dad.

Where did the world come from? The question has an answer, even though I cannot get to it. It is a good question. It is like a crime that has not been solved. There is an answer, even if police do not know it.

The universe is a great mystery.