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

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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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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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Everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best.
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You can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and not get wet.
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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.
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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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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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Just because you have a choice, it doesn't mean that any of them 'has' to be right.
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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.
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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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What you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.
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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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You can't improve sound by having only silence. The problem is to use each at the proper time.
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If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself.
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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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