“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.”
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. It’s my gift to you.”
“You jumped, of course,” explained Canby. “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.”
“I don’t know of any wrong road to Dictionopolis, so if this road goes to Dictionopolis at all it must be the right road, and if it doesn’t it must be the right road to somewhere else, because there are no wrong roads to anywhere. Do you think it will rain?”
“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.
“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.”
“I’m sure you will,” gasped Milo. “But from now on I’m going to have a very good reason before I make up my mind about anything. You can lose too much time jumping to Conclusions.”
“You’ll find,” he remarked gently, “that the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that’s hardly worth the effort.”
“It’s all very well to spend time in Expectations,” he thought, “but talking to that strange man all day would certainly get me nowhere.
For always remember that while it is wrong to use too few, it is often far worse to use too many.”
“That’s absurd,” objected Milo, whose head was spinning from all the numbers and questions. “That may be true,” he acknowledged, “but it’s completely accurate, and as long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong? If you want sense, you’ll have to make it yourself.”
“But what of the Castle in the Air?” the bug objected, not very pleased with the arrangement. “Let it drift away,” said Rhyme. “And good riddance,” added Reason, “for no matter how beautiful it seems, it’s still nothing but a prison.”
“Whether or not you find your own way, you’re bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now it’s quite rusty.
Like most of the good things that have happened in my life, The Phantom Tollbooth was written when I was trying to avoid doing something else—something I was supposed to do. Some people are like that. I’m one of them.
“Sometimes it’s much simpler than seeing things that are,” he said. “For instance, 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.”
“What’s that?” asked Milo fearfully. “As long as you have the sound of laughter,” he groaned unhappily, “I cannot take your sense of humor—and, with it, you’ve nothing to fear from me.”
Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.
“The Doldrums, my young friend, are where nothing ever happens and nothing ever changes.”
“Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?”
Milo continued to think of all sorts of things; of the many detours and wrong turns that were so easy to take, of how fine it was to be moving along, and, most of all, of how much could be accomplished with just a little thought.