Norton Juster Quotes
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You see, to tall men I'm a midget, and to short men I'm a giant; to the skinny ones I'm a fat man, and to the fat ones I'm a thin man.
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You can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and not get wet.
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Do you think it will rain? Milo: But I thought you were the Weather Man? No, I'm the Whether man, for it is more important to know whether there will be weather, whether than what the weather will be.
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And when I'm writing, I write a lot anyway. I might write pages and pages of conversation between characters that don't necessarily end up in the book, or in the story I'm working on, because they're simply my way of getting to know the characters
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Let me try once more," Milo said in an effort to explain. "In other words--" "You mean you have other words?" cried the bird happily. "Well, by all means, use them. You're certainly not doing very well with the ones you have now.
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What you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.
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...it's very much like your trying to reach infinity. You know that it's there, you just don't know where-but just because you can never reach it doesn't mean that it's not worth looking for.
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They all looked very much like the residents of any small valley to which you've never been.
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Everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best.
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Ah, this is fine," he cried triumphantly, holding up a small medallion on a chain. He dusted it off, and engraved on one side were the words "WHY NOT?" "That's a good reason for almost anything - a bit used perhaps, but still quite serviceable.
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Oh dear, all those words again," thought Milo as he climbed into the wagon with Tock and the cabinet members. "How are you going to make it move? It doesn't have a--" "Be very quiet," advised the duke, "for it goes without saying.
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He paused again as a tear of longing rolled from cheek to lip with the sweet-salty taste of an old memory.
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There are no wrong roads to anywhere.
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You can't improve sound by having only silence. The problem is to use each at the proper time.
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Whether or not you find your own way, you're bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now it's quite rusty.
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I received a grant from The Ford Foundation to write a book for kids about urban perception, or how people experience cities, but I kept putting off writing it. Instead I started to write what became The Phantom Tollbooth
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And that's why people no longer care which words they use as long as they use lots of them.
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People always ask about my influences, and they cite a bunch of people I've never heard of
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They walked for a while, all silent in their thoughts, until they reached the car and Alec drew a fine telescope from his shirt and handed it to Milo. "Carry this with you on your journey," he said softly, "for there is much worth noticing that often escapes the eye. Through it you can see everything from the tender moss in a sidewalk crack to the glow of the farthest star — and, most important of all, you can see things as they really are, not just as they seem to be. It's my gift to you.
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Why not? That's a good reason for almost anything - a bit used perhaps, but still quite serviceable.
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Perhaps someday you can have one city as easy to see as Illusions and as hard to forget as Reality.
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Why, did you know that if a beaver two feet long with a tail a foot and a half long can build a dam twelve feet high and six feet wide in two days, all you would need to build Boulder Dam is a beaver sixty-eight feet long with a fifty-one-foot tail?" "Where would you find a beaver that big?" grumbled the Humbug as his pencil point snapped. "I'm sure I don't know," he replied, "but if you did, you'd certainly know what to do with him.
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Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life.
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Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?