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

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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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What you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.
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Infinity is a dreadfully poor place. They can never manage to make ends meet.
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And some looked even more like each other than they did like themselves.
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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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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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Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?
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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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You can't improve sound by having only silence. The problem is to use each at the proper time.
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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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Just as I thought: boys are the cause of everything.
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Everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best.
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One of the problems you have when you read with kids is that once they like something they want you to read it a hundred times.
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Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.
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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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The way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.
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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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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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Perhaps someday you can have one city as easy to see as Illusions and as hard to forget as Reality.
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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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