Quotes from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“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.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“When you realize there is something you don't understand, then you're generally on the right path to understanding all kinds of things.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“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.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“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, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“There is always Joker to see through the delusion. Generation succeeds generation, but there is a fool walking the earth who is never ravaged by time.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“There are five billion people living on this planet. But you fall in love with one particular person, and you won't swap her for any other.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“I sat thinking how terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as incredible as living. One day we suddenly take the fact that we exist for granted - and then, yes, then we don’t think about it anymore until we are about to leave the world again.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“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, because it's not every day you realize you're a living planet dweller on a little island in the universe.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“A Russian cosmonaut and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing Christianity. The brain surgeon was a Christian, but the cosmonaut wasn’t. ‘I have been in outer space many times,’ bragged the cosmonaut, ‘but I have never seen any angels.’ The brain surgeon stared in amazement, but then he said, ‘And I have operated on many intelligent brains, but I have never seen a single thought.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“I don't belong anywhere.
I am neither a heart, a diamond, a club, nor a spade. I am neither a King, a Jack, an Eight, nor an Ace.
As I am here - I am merely the Joker, and who that is I have had to find out for myself.

Every time I toss my head, the jingling bells remind me that I have no family.
I have no number - and no trade either.
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 you have never been fully awake.
It is different for the Joker, because he was put into this world with a flaw:
he sees too deeply and too much.


Truth is a lonely thing.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“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.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“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 you have never been fully awake. Of course, you have seen the sun and the moon, the stars in the sky, and everything that moves, but you haven't really seen it at all. It is different for the Joker, because he was put into this world with a flaw: He sees too clearly and too much.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“It is different for us mortals. We are the ones who become old and grey. We are the ones who become worn at the seams and disappear. But not our dreams. They can live on in other people even after we have gone.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“a sensation is always the same as a piece of news, and a piece of news never lives long.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“If our brains were as simple as we could understand them, than we would be so stupid that we couldn't understand them again.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“We are thrown together with a sprinkling of stardust.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“Every single morning I wake with a bang,' he said. 'It's as though the fact that I am alive is injected into me; I am a character in a fairytale, bursting with life.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“اگر مغز ما آن قدر ساده بود که می‌توانستیم آن را درک کنیم، آن قدر احمق می‌بودیم که به هیچ وجه نمی‌توانستیم آن را درک کنیم.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“What do you learn in school, Hans Thomas?” Dad asked. “To sit still,” I replied. “It’s so difficult that we spend many years learning to do it.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“• هر کسی آزاد است درباره‌ی هرچیزی که دوست دارد خیال بافی کند، اما وظیفه دارد موجودات خیالی خود را ازین واقعیت آگاه کند که آن‌ها خیالی بیش نیستند. در غیر این صورت آن‌ها را دست انداخته، و آن‌ها حق دارند او را بکشند.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“But Dad said we had to try, because neither he or I could bear the thought of living the rest of our lives without her.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“I don't belong anywhere.
I am neither a heart, a diamond, a club, nor a spade. I am neither a King, a Jack, an Eight, nor an Ace.
As I am here - I am merely the Joker, and who that is I have had to find out for myself.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“• خودت را یک نیشگون بگیر تا مطمئن شوی که حقیقت داری.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“• فکر می‌کنم درباره‌ی ساختمان فضای خارج از جو زمین بیشتر اطلاع دارم، تا علت رفتن این زن، بدون آنکه دلیلی برای این کارش بیاورد.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“كيف نستطيع أن نعيش علي هذه الأرض ونحن نغمض عيوننا أو أن نجد الحياة أمراً بديهياً؟”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“أعتقد أننا لسنا وحدنا يا ولدي، إيه أبدا لا. إن الكون يفيض بالحياة والمشكلة الوحيدة هي أننا لن نعرف أبدا ما إن كنا الكائنات الحية الوحيدة أم لا. المجرات هي مثل جزر مهجورة دون أن يكون هناك سفينة تربط بينها”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“تو در واقع با خودت و فرصت به دنیا آمدنت در هزار سال بعد می‌جنگیده‌ای.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“• من هر روز صبح با یک صدای بنگ بیدار می‌شوم. طوری که حس می‌کنم واقعیت زنده بودن در من تزریق می‌شود؛ من شخصیتی در یک قصه‌ی پریان و سرشار از زندگی هستم. زیرا مگر ما که هستیم؟ می‌توانی به من بگویی؟ ما از تجمع ذرات کوچک غبار ستارگان پدید آمده‌ایم. و این چیست؟ این جهان از کدام جهنمی‌ آمده است؟”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“The memories float further and further away from that which once created them.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

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“Boys will be boys, and ballplayers will always be arrested adolescents at heart. The proof comes in the mid-afternoon of an early spring training day, when 40 percent of the New York Mets’ starting rotation—Mike Pelfrey and I—hop a chain-link fence to get onto a football field not far from Digital Domain. We have just returned from Dick’s Sporting Goods, where we purchased a football and a tee. We are here to kick field goals. Long field goals. A day before, we were all lying on the grass stretching and guys started talking about football and field-goal kickers, and David Wright mentioned something about the remarkable range of kickers these days. I can kick a fifty-yard field goal, Pelfrey says. You can not, Wright says. You don’t think so? You want to bet? You give me five tries and I’ll put three of them through. One hundred bucks says you can’t, David says. This is going to be the easiest money I ever make. I am Pelf’s self-appointed big brother, always looking out for him, and I don’t want him to go into this wager cold. So I suggest we get a ball and tee and do some practicing. We get back from Dick’s but find the nearby field padlocked, so of course we climb over the fence. At six feet two inches and 220 pounds, I get over without incident, but seeing Pelf hoist his big self over—all six feet seven inches and 250 pounds of him—is much more impressive. Pelf’s job is to kick and my job is to chase. He sets up at the twenty-yard line, tees up the ball, and knocks it through—kicking toe-style, like a latter-day Lou Groza. He backs up to the twenty-five and then the thirty, and boots several more from each distance. Adding the ten yards for the end zone, he’s now hit from forty yards and is finding his range. Pretty darn good. He insists he’s got another ten yards in his leg. He hits from forty-five, and by now he’s probably taken fifteen or seventeen hard kicks and reports that his right shin is getting sore. We don’t consider stopping. Pelf places the ball on the tee at the forty-yard line: a fifty-yard field goal. He takes a half dozen steps back, straight behind the tee, sprints up, and powers his toe into the ball … high … and far … and just barely over the crossbar. That’s all that is required. I thrust both my arms overhead like an NFL referee. He takes three more and converts on a second fifty-yarder. You are the man, Pelf, I say. Adam Vinatieri should worry for his job. That’s it, Pelf says. I can’t even lift my foot anymore. My shin is killing me. We hop back over the fence, Pelf trying to land as lightly as a man his size can land. His shin hurts so much he can barely put pressure on the gas pedal. He’s proven he can hit a fifty-yard field goal, but I go into big-brother mode and tell him I don’t want him kicking any more field goals or stressing his right leg any further. I convince him to drop the bet with David. The last thing you need is to start the season on the DL because you were kicking field goals, I say. Can you imagine if the papers got ahold of that one? The wager just fades away. David doesn’t mind; he gets a laugh at the story of Pelf hopping the fence and practicing, and drilling long ones.”
― quote from Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball

“No one could say it was my choice to kill the twins, any more than it was my decision to bring them into the world.”
― John Burnside, quote from The Dumb House

“His colleagues at the Bar called him Filth, but not out of irony. It was because he was considered to be the source of the old joke, Failed In London Try Hong Kong. It was said that he had fled the London Bar, very young, very poor, on a sudden whim just after the War, and had done magnificently well in Hong Kong from the start. Being a modest man, they said, he had called himself a parvenu, a fraud, a carefree spirit.
Filth in fact was no great maker of jokes, was not at all modest about his work and seldom, except in great extremity, went in for whims. He was loved, however, admired, laughed at kindly and still much discussed many years after retirement.”
― Jane Gardam, quote from Old Filth

“imagine Winter singing! I wonder if he can scowl and sing and look darkly handsome and mortally offended all at the same time. Probably.”
― Tui T. Sutherland, quote from Moon Rising

“I want everyone to meet you. You're my favorite person of all time.”
― Rainbow Rowell, quote from Eleanor and Park

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