Norton Juster Quotes

Every sunrise gives you a new beginning and a new ending. Let this morning be a new beginning to a better relationship and a new ending to the bad memories. Its an opportunity to enjoy life, breathe freely, think and love. Be grateful for this beautiful day.

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.

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.

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.

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 in a roomful of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're all alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully.

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.

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.

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

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.

A good book written for children can be read by adults

Whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world; when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more; and when you stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off its course. Whenever you laugh, gladness spreads like the ripples in the pond; and whenever you're sad, no one anywhere can be really happy. And it's much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer.

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?

Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless.

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

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

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

I know one thing for certain; it is much harder to tell whether you are lost than whether you were lost, for, on many occasions, where you are going is exactly where you are. On the other hand, if you often find that where you've been is not at all where you should have gone, and, since it's much more difficult to find your way back from someplace you've never left, I suggest you go there immediately and then decide.

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.

Expect everything so that nothing comes unexpected.

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.

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

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.

And remember, also," added the Princess of Sweet Rhyme, "that many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you'll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?