The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes

"But who would want all those terrible noises?" asked Milo, holding his ears.

"Everybody does," said the surprised doctor; "they're very popular today. Why, I'm kept so busy I can hardly fill the orders for noise pills, racket lotion, clamor salve, and hubbub tonic. That's all people seem to want."

An early critique of the rationalisation of urban life and civic form from The Phantom Tollbooth...

Before Jan Gehl, there was Norton Juster...

“killing time” at lunch with Milo in @chaptersbookstore.bsky.social

"Carry this with you, for there is much worth noticing that often escapes the eye. Through it you can see everything from the tender moss in a sidewalk crack to the glow of the farthest star-and, most important of all, you can see things as they really are, not just as they seem to be.”

Seven times the sun rose and almost as quickly disappeared as the colors kept changing. In just a few minutes a whole week had gone by.

The excerpt I needed this morning!

The cellos made the hills glow red, and the leaves and grass were tipped with a soft pale green as the violins began their song. Only the bass fiddles rested as the entire orchestra washed the forest in color.

Milo was overjoyed because they were all playing for him, and just the way they should.

for my sins, this is still me decades later:

And Milo, full of thoughts and questions, curled up on the pages of tomorrow's music and eagerly awaited the dawn.

"What are they playing?" asked Tock

"The sunset, of course. They play it every evening, about this time. And they also play morning, noon, and night, when, of course, it's morning, noon, or night. Why, there wouldn't be any color in the world unless they played it.”

another absolutely lovely pair of sentences.

The sun was dropping slowly from sight, and stripes of purple and orange and crimson and gold piled themselves on top of the distant hills. The last shafts of light waited patiently for a flight of wrens to find their way home, and a group of anxious stars had already taken their places.

"Perhaps someday you can have one city as easy to see as Illusions and as hard to forget as Reality," Milo remarked.

"That will happen only when you bring back Rhyme and Reason," said Alec, smiling, for he had seen right through Milo's plans.

The story of what happened to the city of Reason is too long to fit in a single post, but too good not to post. Feels like an apt metaphor.

Please read:

I feel like there is opportunity for some untapped social commentary here. Completely ordinary man invents false superlatives about himself so people will ask his opinion on things.

"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."

“As you can see, though, I'm neither tall nor short nor fat nor thin. In fact, I'm quite ordinary, but there are so many ordinary men that no one asks their opinion about anything. Now what is your question?"

Just as they suspected, the other side of the house looked the same as the front, the back, and the side, and the door was again answered by a man who looked precisely like the other three.
"Are you the fattest thin man in the world?" asked Tock.
"Do you know one that's fatter?" he asked impatiently

"How nice of you to come by," exclaimed the man, who could have been the midget's twin brother.

"You must be the fat man," said Tock, learning not to count too much on appearance.

"The thinnest one in the world," he replied brightly.

They knocked at the door, whose name plate read "THE MIDGET"

"How are you?" inquired the man, who looked exactly like the giant.

"Are you the midget?" asked Tock again, with a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

"Unquestionably," he answered. "I'm the tallest midget in the world. May I help you?"

"Good afternoon," said the perfectly ordinary-sized man who answered the door.

"Are you the giant?" asked Tock doubtfully.

"To be sure," he replied proudly. "I'm the smallest giant in the world. What can I do for you?"

"Do you know where we are?" asked Milo.

"Certainly," he replied, "we're right here on this very spot. Besides, being lost is never a matter of not knowing where you are; it's a matter of not knowing where you aren't—and I don't care at all about where I'm not."

All those posts will be lost in time, like tears in rain

such a lovely couple of sentences

The late-afternoon sunlight leaped lightly from leaf to leaf, slid along branches and down trunks, and dropped finally to the ground in warm, luminous patches. A soft glow filled the air with the kind of light that made everything look sharp and clear and close enough to reach out and touch.

“You can't always look at things from someone else's Point of View. For instance, from here that looks like a bucket of water," he said, pointing to a bucket of water; "but from an ant's point of view it's a vast ocean, from an elephant's just a cool drink, and to a fish, of course, it's home.“

“It is quite important to know what lies behind things, and the family helps me take care of the rest. My father sees to things, my mother looks after things, my brother sees beyond things, my uncle sees the other side of every question, and my little sister Alice sees under things."

"I'm Alec Bings; I see through things. I can see whatever is inside, behind, around, covered by, or subsequent to anything else. In fact, the only thing I can't see is whatever happens to be right in front of my nose."

"What a silly system." The boy laughed. "Then your head keeps changing its height and you always see things in a different way? Why, when you're fifteen things won't look at all the way they did when you were ten, and at twenty everything will change again."

"Isn't it beautiful?" gasped Milo.

"Oh, I don't know," answered a strange voice. "It's all in the way you look at things."

"I beg your pardon?" said Milo, for he didn't see who had spoken.

"I said it's all in how you look at things," repeated the voice.