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There are good books and there are bad books, period, that's the distinction.

Norton Juster

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Norton Juster
Age: 91 †
Born: 1929
Born: June 2
Died: 2021
Died: March 8
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More quotes by Norton Juster

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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.
Norton Juster
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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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A good book written for children can be read by adults
Norton Juster
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And remember, also, added the Princess of Sweet Rhyme, that many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you'll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.
Norton Juster
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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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AHA! interrupted Officer Shrift, making another note in his little book. Just as I thought: boys are the cause of everything.
Norton Juster
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And some looked even more like each other than they did like themselves.
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
Norton Juster
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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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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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Many of the things which can never be, often are.
Norton Juster
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The way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.
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.
Norton Juster
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Everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best.
Norton Juster
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Just as I thought: boys are the cause of everything.
Norton Juster
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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.
Norton Juster
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You can't improve sound by having only silence. The problem is to use each at the proper time.
Norton Juster
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Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going.
Norton Juster
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Freedom is not a license for chaos.
Norton Juster
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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.
Norton Juster