Quotes from Norton Juster

Why don't they live in Illusions?' suggested the Humbug. 'It's much prettier.' 'Many of them do,' he answered, walking in the direction of the forest once again, 'but it's just as bad to live a place where what you do see isn't there as it is to live in one where what you don't see is. ' 'Perhaps someday you can have one city as easy to see as Illusions and as hard to forget as Reality,' Mili remarked. 'That will happen only when you bring back Rhyme and Reason,' said Alec...

Just because you have a choice, it doesn't mean that any of them has to be right.

We're not interested in making sense; it's not our job.

The Under-secretary of Understanding.

I call myself seven or eight times a day just to see how I am.' 'How are you?' he asked politely. 'Not very well, I'm afraid.

as you've discovered, so many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.

but you had the courage to try; and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.

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.

From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today.

Being lost is never a matter of not knowing where you are; it's a matter of not knowing where you aren't—and I don't care at all about where I'm not. - Alec

What kind of a place is Expectations? inquired Milo,unable to see the humor and feeling very doubtful of the little man's sanity. Good question, good question, he exclaimed. 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.

What a strange thing to have happen," he thought (just as you must be thinking right now). "This game is much more serious than I thought, for here I am riding on a road I've never seen, going to a place I've never heard of, and all because of a tollbooth which came from nowhere. I'm certainly glad that it's a nice day for a trip," he concluded hopefully, for, at the moment, this was the one thing he definitely knew.

For two days and nights and half another day again he walked – through lonely forests and down along the rushing mountain streams that seemed to know their destination far better than he knew his.

the front seat with his alarm again ringing furiously. "Are you all right?" shouted Milo. "Umphh," grunted Tock. "Sorry to get carried away, but I think you get the point." As they drove along, Tock continued to explain the importance of time, quoting the old philosophers and poets and illustrating each point with gestures that brought him perilously close to tumbling headlong from the speeding automobile.

When he had repeated them often enough, they became a decision.

You see," continued the minister, bowing thankfully to the duke, "Dictionopolis is the place where all the words in the world come from. They're grown right here in our orchards.

For always remember that while it is wrong to use too few, it is often far worse to use too many.

today people use as many words as they can and think themselves very wise for doing so, For always remember that while it is wrong to use too few, it is often far worse to use too many.

And you only have one face." "Is that bad?" asked Milo, making sure it was still there. "You'll soon wear it out using it for everything," replied the Dodecahedron.

pounding down the mountainside, in a cloud of clinging dust and a chorus of chilling shrieks, came all the loathsome creatures who choose to live in Ignorance

Why not take a few pounds of 'happys'?" advised the salesman. "They're much more practical—and very useful for Happy Birthday, Happy New Year, happy days, and happy-go-lucky.

It's more important to know whether there will be weather, than what the weather will be.

I)t'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.

My goodness," thought Milo, "everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best.