Norton Juster Quotes

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.

So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.

...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.

You must never feel badly about making mistakes.

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.

The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort.

Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.

But I suppose there's a lot to see everywhere, if only you keep your eyes open.

A good book written for children can be read by adults

A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.

Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?

Since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking.

Freedom is not a license for chaos.

And it's much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer.

What you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.

What you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.

Expect everything so that nothing comes unexpected.

Infinity is a dreadfully poor place. They can never manage to make ends meet.

Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going.

Things which are equally bad are also equally good. Try to look at the bright side of things. - Humbug

...it's very much like your trying to reach infinity. You know that it's there, you just don't know where-but just because you can never reach it doesn't mean that it's not worth looking for.

Many of the things which can never be, often are.

Why not? That's a good reason for almost anything - a bit used perhaps, but still quite serviceable.

There are good books and there are bad books, period, that's the distinction.

You can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and not get wet.

I am the Terrible Trivium, demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit.

There is much worth noticing that often escapes the eye.

The way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.

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

But just because you can never reach it, doesn’t mean that it’s not worth looking for.

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.

People always ask about my influences, and they cite a bunch of people I've never heard of

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.

It's bad enough wasting time without killing it.

...I'll continue to see things as a child. It's not so far to fall.

It has been a long trip," said Milo, climbing onto the couch where the princesses sat; "but we would have been here much sooner if I hadn't made so many mistakes. I'm afraid it's all my fault.

If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself.

You can't improve sound by having only silence. The problem is to use each at the proper time.

Sometimes I find the best way of getting from one place to another is simply to erase everything and begin again.

Everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best.

And some looked even more like each other than they did like themselves.

...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.

We never choose which words to use, for as long as they mean what they mean to mean, we don’t care if they make sense or nonsense.

And that's why people no longer care which words they use as long as they use lots of them.

AHA!" interrupted Officer Shrift, making another note in his little book. "Just as I thought: boys are the cause of everything.

I write best in the morning, and I can only write for about half a day, that's about it.

He paused again as a tear of longing rolled from cheek to lip with the sweet-salty taste of an old memory.

To a child, and to an adult, too, what you discover by yourself, or what you think you discover by yourself, is what stays.

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

Perhaps you'd care for a synonym bun," suggested the duke.