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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
Writing
Became
Grant
People
Instead
Urban
Cities
Grants
Started
Received
Experience
Kept
Write
Putting
Phantom
Kids
Perception
Phantoms
Book
Foundation
Ford

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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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They all looked very much like the residents of any small valley to which you've never been.
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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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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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Perhaps someday you can have one city as easy to see as Illusions and as hard to forget as Reality.
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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.
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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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You see. . . it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?
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Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.
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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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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.
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Just as I thought: boys are the cause of everything.
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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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But I suppose there's a lot to see everywhere, if only you keep your eyes open.
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What you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.
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Everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best.
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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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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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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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Freedom is not a license for chaos.
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