Norton Juster Quotes

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.

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.

When you`re very young and you learn something - a fact, a piece of information, whatever - it doesn`t connect to anything.

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.

There are good books and there are bad books, period, that`s the distinction.

People always ask about my influences, and they cite a bunch of people I`ve never heard of.

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.

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

I received a grant from The Ford Foundation to write a book for kids about urban perception, or how people experience cities, but I kept putting off writing it. Instead I started to write what became The Phantom Tollbooth.

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.

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.

It was really written as most, I think, books are by writers - for themselves. There was something that just had to be written, in a way that it had to be written. If you know what I mean.

I think really good books can be read by anybody.

I write best in the morning, and I can only write for about half a day, that`s about it.