Jostein Gaarder

Thus 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.

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

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.

Was Jesus a christian?

... 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...

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.

But the dream of something unlikely has its own special name. We call it hope.

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.

I no longer feel the need to see and sense more than I've already experienced. I just want so desperately to hang on what I have.

The truth is that I feel like a ghost already, and I have to catch my breath each time I think about it. I begin to understand why ghosts go in for so much sighing and hooting. It's not to scare their descendants. It's just that they find it so hard to breathe in a time other than their own.We don't only have a place in existence. We also have an allotted span.That's the way things are, and all I can do is extrapolate from what's around me now.

She sent me a sunny smile, and what a smile, George; it was a smile that could have melted the whole world, because if the whole world had seen it, it would have had the power to stop all wars and hatred on the face of the planet, or at lease there would have been some long ceasefires.

She was a stranger. She came from a more beautiful fairytale than ours. But she__ managed to find her way into our reality, perhaps because she was here to save us from what people sometimes call __he monotony of life._ Until that moment I__ been completely ignorant of such missionary work. I__ thoughts there was only two types people at least. There was the Orange Girl, and there were the rest of us.

I can wait until my heart bleeds with sorrow.

Although I've always been easily led by my imagination, I was, and I remain, a rational person.

But sorrow can also be contagious. Fear is different. It isn't as communicable as laughter or sadness, and a good thing too. Fear is almost entirely a lonely thing.

But if two people do almost nothing except search for one another, it's hardly surprising if they run across each other by chance.

I've nothing against eye make-up and lipstick. But the fact is 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. And there are probably boys whose eyes are never raised above the horizon because of football. There can be quite a chasm between a small make-up mirror and a proper mirror telescope! I think it's what they call a 'matter of perspective'. Perhaps it could also be called an 'eye-opener' as well. It's never too late to experience an eye-opener. But many people live their entire lives without realizing that they're floating through empty space.There's too much going on down here. It's hard enough thinking about your looks.We belong on this earth. I'm not trying to dispute it. We're part of nature's life on this planet. Monkeys and reptiles have shown us how we breed, and I have no quarrel with that. In different natural surroundings everything might have been very different, but here we are. And I repeat: I'm not denying it. I just don't think that prevent us from trying to see a little beyond the ends of our noses.

But what is a person, George? How much is a person worth? Are we nothing but dust that is whipped up and spread to the winds?