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A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.
Norton Juster
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Norton Juster
Age: 91 †
Born: 1929
Born: June 2
Died: 2021
Died: March 8
Architect
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Composition
Sign
Wasp
Intellect
Decayed
Smell
Slavish
Concern
Wasps
Gone
Odious
Words
Bankrupt
Syllables
More quotes by Norton Juster
Perhaps someday you can have one city as easy to see as Illusions and as hard to forget as Reality.
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I write best in the morning, and I can only write for about half a day, that's about it.
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You may not see it now, said the Princess of Pure Reason, looking knowingly at Milo's puzzled face, but whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way.
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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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Just as I thought: boys are the cause of everything.
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You must never feel badly about making mistakes.
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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 am the Terrible Trivium, demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit.
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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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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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Many of the things which can never be, often are.
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There are good books and there are bad books, period, that's the distinction.
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You see, years ago I was just an ordinary bee minding my own business, smelling flowers all day, and occasionally picking up part-time work in people's bonnets. Then one day I realized that I'd never amount to anything without an education and, being naturally adept at spelling, I decided that—
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There are no wrong roads to anywhere.
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Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.
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The way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.
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We never choose which words to use, for as long as they mean what they mean to mean, we don’t care if they make sense or nonsense.
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I never knew words could be so confusing, Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear. Only when you use a lot to say a little, answered Tock. Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he'd heard all day.
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And some looked even more like each other than they did like themselves.
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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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