Norton Juster Quotes

“I never knew words could be so confusing," Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear."Only when you use a lot to say a little," answered Tock.Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he'd heard all day.”

“I never knew words could be so confusing," Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear."Only when you use a lot to say a little," answered Tock.Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he'd heard all day.”

“Is everyone with one face called a Milo?""Oh no," Milo replied; "some are called Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things.""How terribly confusing," he cried. "Everything here is called exactly what it is. The triangles are called triangles, the circles are called circles, and even the same numbers have the same name. 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.""I never thought of it that way," Milo admitted."Then I suggest you begin at once," admonished the Dodecahedron from his admonishing face, "for here in Digitopolis everything is quite precise.”

“This is fantastically squalid," said Milo. "We may never get out of here alive.”

“Are you just gonna stare at Jack or are we gonna go?" Milo asked, poking his head into the bedroom.”

“Stupid deer," I said, embarrassed about being startled. "We need a ladder.""I think they're easier to shoot with a rifle.""I'm not talking about the deer," I said, hitting Milo on the back of his shoulder. "We need a ladder to look over the wall.""Or a catapult," Milo said seriously.”

“I am the Terrible Trivium, demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit." The Humbug dropped his needle and stared in disbelief while Milo and Tock began to back away slowly. "Don't try to leave," he ordered, with a menacing sweep of his arm, "for there's so very much to do, and you still have over eight hundred years to go on the first job." "But why do only unimportant things?" asked Milo, who suddenly remembered how much time he spent each day doing them. "Think of all the trouble it saves," the man explained, and his face looked as if he'd be grinning an evil grin - if he could grin at all. "If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing, and if it weren't for that dreadful magic staff, you'd never know how much time you were wasting.”

“Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom.”

“It's not okay to lie about people and particularly not okay to hurl the worst imaginable names at people just because you think you might not like their politics.”

“The thing I most hate about the Left is that they want to stop us laughing - to prescribe which jokes are OK and which are not OK to make in public and to draw artificial lines around certain subjects. I find all sorts of inappropriate things funny.”

“Just telling the facts are no longer enough. You now have to be persuasive, charismatic, interesting, and funny. Just telling people things isn't enough anymore.”