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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.

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
Easily
Knowingly
Worth
Remarked
Effort
Nodded
Wrong
Chin
Times
Chins
Find
Gently
Thing
Hardly
Several
Stroked

More quotes by Norton Juster

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The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort.
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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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...it's not just learning that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things that matters.
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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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Perhaps someday you can have one city as easy to see as Illusions and as hard to forget as Reality.
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Infinity is a dreadfully poor place. They can never manage to make ends meet.
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AHA! interrupted Officer Shrift, making another note in his little book. Just as I thought: boys are the cause of everything.
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You see, it's really quite simple. A simile is just a mode of comparison employing 'as' and 'like' to reveal the hidden character or essence of whatever we want to describe, and through the use of fancy, association, contrast, extension, or imagination, to enlarge our understanding or perception of human experience and observation.
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It's bad enough wasting time without killing it.
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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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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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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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Since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking.
Norton Juster
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Many of the things which can never be, often are.
Norton Juster
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If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself.
Norton Juster
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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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That's the way most everyone gets here. It's really quite simple: every time you decide something without having a good reason, you jump to Conclusions whether you like it or not. It's such an easy trip to make that I've been here hundreds of times.
Norton Juster
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Everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best.
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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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Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going.
Norton Juster