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
octopus phantom-tollbooth heard
Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?
travel philosophy journey
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.
cities attention lasts
No one paid any attention to how things looked, and as they moved faster and faster everything grew uglier and dirtier, and as everything grew uglier and dirtier they moved faster and faster, and at last a very strange thing began to happen. Because nobody cared, the city slowly began to disappear. Day by day the buildings grew fainter and fainter, and the streets faded away, until at last it was entirely invisible. There was nothing to see at all.
effort phantom-tollbooth can-do
The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort.
eye ifs
But I suppose there's a lot to see everywhere, if only you keep your eyes open.
inspirational mistake long
You must never feel badly about making mistakes ... as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.
children book adults
A good book written for children can be read by adults
eight two feet
Why, did you know that if a beaver two feet long with a tail a foot and a half long can build a dam twelve feet high and six feet wide in two days, all you would need to build Boulder Dam is a beaver sixty-eight feet long with a fifty-one-foot tail?" "Where would you find a beaver that big?" grumbled the Humbug as his pencil point snapped. "I'm sure I don't know," he replied, "but if you did, you'd certainly know what to do with him.
beautiful country night
Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.
philosophy unexpected phantom-tollbooth
Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.
optimistic long impossible
So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.
time giving needs
Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life.
jobs effort tasks
I am the Terrible Trivium, demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit.
trying looks sides
Things which are equally bad are also equally good. Try to look at the bright side of things. - Humbug