“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.”
Work
Twelve-year-old Hans Thomas lives alone with his father, a man who likes to givehis sons lessons about Life and has a penchant for philosophy. Hans Thomas' mother left when he was four (to find' herself) and the story begins when father and son set off on a trip to Greece, where she now lives, to try to persuade her to come home. En rout, in Switzerland, Hans Thomas is given a magnifying glass by a dwarf at a petrol station, and the next day he finds a tiny book in his bread roll which can only be read with a magnifying glass. How did the book come to be there? Why does the dwarf keep showing up? It is all very perplxing and Hans Thomas has enough to cope with, with the daunting prospect of seeing his mother. Now his journey has turned into an encounter withthe unfathomable...or does it all have a logical explanation?
Quotes
Showing 1-7 of 7
Jostein Gaarder
Canonical work source
“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.”
“When you realize there is something you don't understand, then you're generally on the right path to understanding all kinds of things.”
“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...”
“Although you may not stumble across a Martian in the garden, you might stumble across yourself. The day that happens, you'll probably also scream a little. And that'll be perfectly all right...”
“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 yo...”
“How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living.”
“As long as we are children, we have the ability to experience things around us--but then we grow used to the world. To grow up is to get drunk on sensory experience.”