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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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Norton Juster
Age: 91 †
Born: 1929
Born: June 2
Died: 2021
Died: March 8
Architect
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Cities
Grants
Started
Received
Experience
Kept
Write
Putting
Phantom
Kids
Perception
Phantoms
Book
Foundation
Ford
Writing
Became
Grant
People
Instead
Urban

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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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I am the Terrible Trivium, demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit.
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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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Everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best.
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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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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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Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going.
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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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Do you think it will rain? Milo: But I thought you were the Weather Man? No, I'm the Whether man, for it is more important to know whether there will be weather, whether than what the weather will be.
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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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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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Perhaps someday you can have one city as easy to see as Illusions and as hard to forget as Reality.
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You see, years ago I was just an ordinary bee minding my own business, smelling flowers all day, and occasionally picking up part-time work in people's bonnets. Then one day I realized that I'd never amount to anything without an education and, being naturally adept at spelling, I decided that—
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And some looked even more like each other than they did like themselves.
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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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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.
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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.
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