Top 100 Norton Juster Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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.”

— Norton Juster

52. “But that’s just as bad,” protested Milo. “You mean just as good,” corrected the Humbug. “Things which are equally bad are also equally good. Try to look at the bright side of things.” “I don’t know which side of anything to look at,” protested Milo. “Everything is so confusing and all your words only make things worse.”

— Norton Juster

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

— Norton Juster

54. “And when I’m writing, I write a lot anyway. I might write pages and pages of conversation between characters that don’t necessarily end up in the book, or in the story I’m working on, because they’re simply my way of getting to know the characters.”

— Norton Juster

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

— Norton Juster

56. “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.”

— Norton Juster

57. “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.”

— Norton Juster

58. “I didn’t know that I was going to have to eat my own words,′ objected Milo. ‘Of course, of course, everyone here does,’ the king grunted. ‘You should have made a tastier speech.”

— Norton Juster

59. “I’m the official Senses Taker, and I must have some information before I can take your senses.”

— Norton Juster

60. “Perhaps you’d care for a synonym bun,” suggested the duke.”

— Norton Juster

61. “Why, did you know that there are almost as many kinds of stillness as there are sounds? But, sadly enough, no one pays any attention to them these days.”

— Norton Juster

62. “I cannot take your sense of humor – and, with it, you’ve nothing to fear from me.”

— Norton Juster

63. “Oh dear, all those words again,” thought Milo as he climbed into the wagon with Tock and the cabinet members. “How are you going to make it move? It doesn’t have a – ” “Be very quiet,” advised the duke, “for it goes without saying.”

— Norton Juster

64. “You’ll find,” he remarked gently, “that the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that’s hardly worth the effort.”

— Norton Juster

65. “When you’re very young and you learn something – a fact, a piece of information, whatever – it doesn’t connect to anything.”

— Norton Juster

66. “The Under-secretary of Understanding.”

— Norton Juster

67. “For always remember that while it is wrong to use too few, it is often far worse to use too many.” – Which Macabre.”

— Norton Juster

68. “Ah, this is fine,” he cried triumphantly, holding up a small medallion on a chain. He dusted it off, and engraved on one side were the words “WHY NOT?” “That’s a good reason for almost anything – a bit used perhaps, but still quite serviceable.”

— Norton Juster

69. “Rhyme and reason answer all problems.”

— Norton Juster

70. “But I find the best things I do, I do when I’m trying to avoid doing something else I’m supposed to be doing. You know, you’re working on something. You get bugged, or you lose your enthusiasm or something. So you turn to something else with an absolute vengeance.”

— Norton Juster

71. “The Mathemagician nodded knowingly and stroked his chin several times. “You’ll find,” he remarked gently, “that the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that’s hardly worth the effort.”

— Norton Juster

72. “You see,” he went on, “it’s very much like your trying to reach Infinity. You know that it’s there, but you just don’t know where – but just because you can never reach it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth looking for.”

— Norton Juster

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

— Norton Juster

74. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” said the Mathemagician as he scooped up the pieces. “We use the broken ones for fractions.”

— Norton Juster

75. “It is much better to look for what I may never find than to find what I do not really want.”

— Norton Juster

76. “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.”

— Norton Juster

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

— Norton Juster

78. “Why is it,′ he said quietly, ’that quite often even the things which are correct just don’t seem to be right?”

— Norton Juster

79. “A good book written for children can be read by adults.”

— Norton Juster

80. “There are other advantages,” continued the child. “For instance, if one rat were cornered by nine cats, on the average, each cat would be ten percent rat and the rat would be ninety percent cat. If you happened to be a rat, you can see how much nicer it would make things.”

— Norton Juster

81. “Of course, if you’ve ever gotten a surprise package, you can imagine how puzzled and excited Milo was; and if you’ve never gotten one, pay close attention, because someday you might.”

— Norton Juster

82. “Ali zar u buci nema i dobrih zvukova?”

— Norton Juster

83. “I remember when I was a kid in school and teachers would explain things to me about what I read, and I’d think, Where did they get that? I didn’t read that in there. Later you look at it and think, That’s kind of an interesting idea.”

— Norton Juster

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

— Norton Juster

85. “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.”

— Norton Juster

86. “One of the problems you have when you read with kids is that once they like something they want you to read it a hundred times.”

— Norton Juster

87. “They all looked very much like the residents of any small valley to which you’ve never been.”

— Norton Juster

88. “Where is the sound?” someone hastily scribbled on the blackboard, and they all waited anxiously for the reply. Milo caught his breath, picked up the chalk, and explained simply, “It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

— Norton Juster

89. “Very serious, very serious. You can’t get in without a reason.”

— Norton Juster

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

— Norton Juster

91. “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.”

— Norton Juster

92. “BOSH!” replied the Humbug. “We’re an old and noble family, honorable to the core – Insecticus humbugium, if I may use the Latin.”

— Norton Juster

93. “A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect.”

— Norton Juster

94. “And you are almost never right about anything,′ he said, pointing at the Humbug. ’and, when you are, it’s usually an accident.”

— Norton Juster

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

— Norton Juster

96. “I soon discovered the truth of an old saying: “When God wants to punish you, he grants your wishes.”

— Norton Juster

97. “And, as you’ve discovered, so many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible.”

— Norton Juster

98. “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.”

— Norton Juster

99. “And that’s why people no longer care which words they use as long as they use lots of them.”

— Norton Juster

100. “NONSENSE! Everyone loves a Humbug,” shouted the Humbug. “As I was saying to the king just the other day – –.”

— Norton Juster