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if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones.

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
Real
Ones
Something
Easier
Things
Open
Life
Eyes
Eye
Often
Wells
Imaginary
Well
Closed

More quotes by Norton Juster

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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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They all looked very much like the residents of any small valley to which you've never been.
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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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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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The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort.
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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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Why not? That's a good reason for almost anything - a bit used perhaps, but still quite serviceable.
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And some looked even more like each other than they did like themselves.
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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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Freedom is not a license for chaos.
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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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I think really good books can be read by anybody.
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The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that.
Norton Juster
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Just because you have a choice, it doesn't mean that any of them 'has' to be right.
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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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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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Just as I thought: boys are the cause of everything.
Norton Juster
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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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Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.
Norton Juster
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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.
Norton Juster