Quotes from book
The Phantom Tollbooth

Norton Juster

The Phantom Tollbooth is a children's fantasy adventure novel written by Norton Juster with illustrations by Jules Feiffer, published in 1961 by Random House . It tells the story of a bored young boy named Milo who unexpectedly receives a magic tollbooth one afternoon and, having nothing better to do, drives through it in his toy car, transporting him to the Kingdom of Wisdom, once prosperous but now troubled. There, he acquires two faithful companions and goes on a quest to restore to the kingdom its exiled princesses—named Rhyme and Reason—from the Castle in the Air. In the process, he learns valuable lessons, finding a love of learning. The text is full of puns and wordplay, such as when Milo unintentionally jumps to Conclusions, an island in Wisdom, thus exploring the literal meanings of idioms.

“Is everyone who lives in Ignorance like you?" asked Milo.
"Much worse," he said longingly. "But I don't live here. I'm from a place very far away called Context.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

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

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“Expect everything so that nothing comes unexpected.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

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

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

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

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“There are no wrong roads to anywhere.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“It's bad enough wasting time without killing it.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

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

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Variant: So many things are possible as long as you don't know they're impossible.
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Variant: 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.
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

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

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“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 book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

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

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

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

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

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

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth