Jostein Gaarder Quotes

It is very easy to take for granted the phenomenon that we are each alive, but we must try not to.

We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.

The chances of each of us coming into existence are infinitesimally small, and even though we shall all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our decades in the sun.

I am absolutely intrigued by life, and I really want to hold onto it.

I'm living in the present, thinking about the past, hoping for the future.

I cannot help but think a curious event is this life of mine.

I may think I have inalienable rights to be alive and happy, but I don't - life is a blessing.

Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at the galaxy's edge... there is all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. No thing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.

A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.

It's wonderful to know you're aging, because that means you're still on the planet, right?

I may not believe in life after death, but what a gift it is to be alive now.

I don't wonder about anything. I'm too old to wonder. I think the most important thing is to wake-up with a pulse. I look in the obituary columns. If I'm not in it, I get out of bed.

I don't deny," he said, "that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.

My typical day is I wake up and appreciate that I can still wake up.

Sometimes I wake up in awe that I'm alive. I can't get over that part, so I guess it makes me kind of like an existentialist.

[H]appy or miserable, life is the only blessing which man possesses[.

Don't complain about growing old — many, many people do not have that privilege.

People don't live or die, people just float.

If you can't get excited about living life, then what are you doing?

You get into your late fifties, people start falling like flies all around you. I don't take life for granted any more. I'm really glad to be here.

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.

'Biutiful' is not about death. It's about life. It's a hymn to life.

It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter.

As I come towards the end of my life, you get to see things in a slightly different perspective.