Jostein Gaarder Quotes

Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now.

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.

Not until you become a stranger to yourself will you be able to make acquaintance with the Friend.

In my book, I was trying to get into my own soul.

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.

I felt the need to tell stories to understand myself.

To work on great material, what you really end up working on is yourself, your own humanity.

The delights of self-discovery are always available.

The longest journey is the journey inwards. Of him who has chosen his destiny, Who has started upon his quest for the source of his being.

A lot of people that embark on spiritual endeavors tended to, especially in the '60s and '70s, they tended to give up what they had before and cut themselves off from their lives, previous life as it were. But, I don't think that one should do that.

The only journey is the one within.

Everyone and everything that shows up in our life is a reflection of something that is happening inside of us.

The next frontier is not in front of us but inside us.

Ultimately, I want people to be inspired to go on their own journey of self-discovery.

It's torment to look in the mirror and not recognize the man in the reflection. How amazing would it be to love someone through their honest and ugly moments?! It takes a journey to work off the mask to become authentic and whole.

The message of 'The Distance To Here' is no secret. It is a message of love and an invitation to myself and to those who want to come along to ask the big questions and not feel uncool doing it.

I think at some point during everyone's life, you finally figure yourself out. I haven't even done that yet. I'm still learning who I am.

If you do not go within, you without

When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left.

Everyone should go inward, get curious about themselves, and investigate their shadows. It's one of the most important gifts we can give humanity. It's one of our most vital causes.

The exploration of oneself is usually also an exploration of the world at large, of other writers, a process of comparison with oneself with others, discoveries of kinships, gradual illumination of one's own potentialities.

Life is an endless process of self-discovery.

There are, forever, swamps to be drained, cities to be created, mines to be exploited, children to be fed ... But the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through vast forests, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.

The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else.

Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development.