But all fairytales have rules, and perhaps itโs their rules that actually distinguish one fairytale from the other. These rules never need to be understood. They only need to be followed. If not, what they promise wonโt come true.
Jostein GaarderYou can never know if a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. Itโs something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don't think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first kiss.
Jostein GaarderAs a Roman philosopher, Cicero, said of him a few hundred years later, Socrates 'called philosophy down from the sky and established her in the towns and introduced her into homes and forced her to investigate life, ethics, good and evil.
Jostein GaarderThe question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a persons needs.
Jostein GaarderWhen we die, as when the scenes have been fixed on to celluloid and the scenery is pulled down and burnt โ we are phantoms in the memories of our descendants. Then we are ghosts, my dear, then we are myths. But still we are together. We are the past together, we are a distant past. Beneath the dome of the mysterious stars, I still hear your voice.
Jostein Gaarder