Norton Juster
Norton Juster
Norton Justeris an American academic, architect, and popular writer. He is best known as an author of children's books, notably for The Phantom Tollbooth and The Dot and the Line...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth2 June 1929
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
rain thinking somewhere-else
I don't know of any wrong road to Dictionopolis, so if this road goes to Dictionopolis at all it must be the right road, and if it doesn't it must be the right road to somewhere else, because there are no wrong roads to anywhere. Do you think it will rain?
mean effort bird
Let me try once more," Milo said in an effort to explain. "In other words--" "You mean you have other words?" cried the bird happily. "Well, by all means, use them. You're certainly not doing very well with the ones you have now.
book boys night
And now," he continued, speaking to Milo, "where were you on the night of July 27?" "What does that have to do with it?" asked Milo. "It's my birthday, that's what," said the policeman as he entered "Forgot my birthday" in his little book. "Boys always forget other people's birthdays.
moving cabinets dukes
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.
rain men thinking
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.
...it's just as bad to live in a place where what you do see isn't there as it is to live in one where what you don't see is.
book good-book distinction
There are good books and there are bad books, period, that's the distinction.
simple way phantom-tollbooth
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.
long people use
And that's why people no longer care which words they use as long as they use lots of them.
people citing influence
People always ask about my influences, and they cite a bunch of people I've never heard of
book character writing
And when I'm writing, I write a lot anyway. I might write pages and pages of conversation between characters that don't necessarily end up in the book, or in the story I'm working on, because they're simply my way of getting to know the characters
book writing kids
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
teacher school kids
I remember when I was a kid in school and teachers would explain things to me about what I read, and I'd think, Where did they get that? I didn't read that in there. Later you look at it and think, That's kind of an interesting idea
kids thinking realizing
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