Everything you know gained from experience

— Jostein Gaarder

Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone off course because of a physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a 'sound mind in a sound body'.

— Jostein Gaarder

He could very likely have appealed for leniency. At least he could have saved his life by agreeing to leave Athens. But had he done this he would not have been Socrates. He valued his conscience--and the truth-- higher than life.

— Jostein Gaarder

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

— Jostein Gaarder

I can wait until my heart bleeds with sorrow.

— Jostein Gaarder

I didn't feel lonely until there was something to yearn for. Loneliness and longing are two sides of the same coin.

— Jostein Gaarder

If 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

If just one of [those people] experiences life as a crazy adventure--and I mean that he, or she, experiences this every single day... Then he or she is a joker in a pack of cards.

— Jostein Gaarder

If you believed in Christianity or Islam it was called 'faith', but if you believed in astrology or Friday the thirteenth it was Superstition!

— Jostein Gaarder

I have gone around observing your activities from the outside. Because of this I have also been able to see things to which you have been blind... Every morning you have gone to work, but you have never been fully awake. Of course, you have seen the sun and the moon, the stars in the sky, and everything that moves, but you haven't really seen it at all. It is different for the Joker, because he was put into this world with a flaw: He sees too clearly and too much.

— Jostein Gaarder