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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
Smell
Slavish
Concern
Wasps
Gone
Odious
Words
Bankrupt
Syllables
Composition
Sign
Wasp
Intellect
Decayed

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If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself.
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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 think kids slowly begin to realize that what they're learning relates to other things they know. Then learning starts to get more and more exciting
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Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless.
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Everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best.
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Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?
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You must never feel badly about making mistakes.
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When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. On the way he thought about coming home, and coming home he thought about going. Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he'd even bothered.
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A good book written for children can be read by adults
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I think really good books can be read by anybody.
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Infinity is a dreadfully poor place. They can never manage to make ends meet.
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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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Freedom is not a license for chaos.
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The Mathemagician nodded knowingly and stroked his chin several times. “You’ll find,” he remarked gently, “that the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that’s hardly worth the effort.
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Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going. Of course, some people never go beyond Expectations, but my job is to hurry them along whether they like it or not.
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And some looked even more like each other than they did like themselves.
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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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But I suppose there's a lot to see everywhere, if only you keep your eyes open.
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It's bad enough wasting time without killing it.
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