It 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

I 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

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.

— Jostein Gaarder

Look at the world, Georg, look at the world before you've filled yourself with too much physics and chemistry.

— Jostein Gaarder

Man is the measure of all things', said the Sophist Protagoras (c. 485-410 B.C.). By that he meant that whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a person's needs.

— Jostein Gaarder

No day is alike - I do many other things, and I'm very active in the environmental movement.

— Jostein Gaarder

Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of them fall off, but others cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink. 'Ladies and Gentlemen,' they yell, 'we are floating in space!' But none of the people down there care

— Jostein Gaarder

Our lives are part of a unique adventure... Nevertheless, most of us think the world is 'normal' and are constantly hunting for something abnormal--like angels or Martians. But that is just because we don't realize the world is a mystery. As for myself, I felt completely different. I saw the world as an amazing dream. I was hunting for some kind of explanation of how everything fit together.

— Jostein Gaarder

Over the entrance to the temple at Delphi was a famous inscription: KNOW THYSELF! It reminded visitors that man must never believe himself to be more than mortal - and that no man can escape his destiny.

— Jostein Gaarder

People are, generally speaking, either dead certain or totally indifferent.

— Jostein Gaarder