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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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What you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.
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You must never feel badly about making mistakes.
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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 am the Terrible Trivium, demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit.
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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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It's bad enough wasting time without killing it.
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The only other thing which I think is important is: Don't write a book or start a book with the expectation of communicating a message in a very important way.
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Many of the things which can never be, often are.
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Whether or not you find your own way, you're bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now it's quite rusty.
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If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself.
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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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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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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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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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The way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.
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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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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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They all looked very much like the residents of any small valley to which you've never been.
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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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