The Phantom Tollbooth

by Norton Juster

“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.

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

“WHY NOT?” “That’s a good reason for almost anything—a bit used perhaps, but still quite serviceable.”

“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.

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

discussing words

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. Then one day someone discovered that if you walked as fast as possible and looked at nothing but your shoes you would arrive at your destination much more quickly. Soon everyone was doing it. They all rushed down the avenues and hurried along the boulevards seeing nothing of the wonders and beauties of their city as they went.”

book was written years ago, but sounds more appropriate today

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

“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.”

“You must never feel badly about making mistakes,” explained Reason quietly, “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 it’s not just learning things that’s important. It’s learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matters.”

so many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible.”