Phantom Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Phantom. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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If I am the phantom, it is because man's hatred has made me so. If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Anything is a waste of time unless you are fucking well or creating well or getting well or looming toward a kind of phantom-love-happiness.
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Charles Bukowski
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It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.
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Virginia Woolf (The Death of the Moth and Other Essays)
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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.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms
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Guy de Maupassant (Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques (Classiques hachette))
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Should I tell you that when we're apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I've just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?
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Casey McQuiston (Red, White & Royal Blue)
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All I wanted was to be loved for myself." (Erik)
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
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George Lucas (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (Star Wars Novelizations, #1))
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Erik is not truly dead. He lives on within the souls of those who choose to listen to the music of the night.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don't see the self as self, what do we have to fear?
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Lao Tzu (The Way of Life)
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Her mother placed a phantom hand over Aelin’s heart. 'It is the strength of this that matters. No matter where you are, no matter how far, this will lead you home.
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Sarah J. Maas (Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7))
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Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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You must never feel badly about making mistakes ... 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.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead." - Christine, from Gaston Leroux's: The Phantom of the Opera.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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None of us can choose where we shall love...
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Susan Kay (Phantom)
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For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist.
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Vladimir Nabokov
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To put it in a nutshell, he was afflicted with a love of literature. It was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality.
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Virginia Woolf (Orlando)
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He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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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.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Softly, deftly, music shall caress you. Hear it, feel it, Secretly possess you.
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Charles Hart (The Phantom of the Opera: Piano/Vocal)
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I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears... and she did not run away!...and she did not die!... She remained alive, weeping over me, weeping with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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Everybody is so terribly sensitive about the things they know best.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Because one day I'll leave you a phantom to lead you in the summer to join the black parade
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Gerard Way
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I learned the bad guys are not always bad, the good guys are not always good, and to quote Captain Barbossa, the parameters are like rules, mostly guidelines. And that it takes a little bit of bad boy to fight the evil in the world. --Terri Mitchell
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Sherrilyn Kenyon (Phantom in the Night (B.A.D. Agency, #2))
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The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than a razor’s edge, sharper than a hound’s tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom.
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Philip K. Dick (VALIS)
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You can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and not get wet.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Are people so unhappy when they love?" "Yes, Christine, when they love and are not sure of being loved.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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People do not put their faith in phantoms.
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Marissa Meyer (Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, #4))
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But just because you can never reach it, doesn’t mean that it’s not worth looking for.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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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.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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You are crying! You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to themβ€”even if, in truth, their victims couldn’t care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.
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N.K. Jemisin (The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3))
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Floating, falling, sweet intoxication. Touch me, trust me, savor each sensation. Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in to the power of the music of the night.
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Charles Hart (The Phantom of the Opera: Piano/Vocal)
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It was as if they had leapt over the arduous cavalry of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love. They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion: beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.
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Gabriel GarcΓ­a MΓ‘rquez (Love in the Time of Cholera)
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The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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It's bad enough wasting time without killing it.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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. . . Action always happens in the present, because it is an expression of the body, which can only exist in the here and now. But the mind is like a phantom that lives only in the past or future. It's only power over you is to draw your attention our of the present.
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Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives)
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... what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Just because you have a choice, it doesn't mean that any of them 'has' to be right.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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The night you gave me my birthday party... you were a young Lieutenant and I was a fragrant phantom, wasn't I? And it was a radiant night, a night of soft conspiracy and the trees agreed that it was all going to be for the best.
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Zelda Fitzgerald
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Know that it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!...Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore can never leave me again!...Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me!
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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There are no wrong roads to anywhere.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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I'm your phantom dance partner. I'm your shadow. I'm not anything more.
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Haruki Murakami (Dance Dance Dance)
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You must know that I am made of death, from head to foot, and it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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The passion I feel for you is more than you’re prepared for.
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Kailin Gow (The Phantom Diaries (The Phantom Diaries, #1))
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She never got a chance to fall out of love, to do it properly, slowly and thoroughly, and the result was he was like a phantom limb. Gone but still there. And like a true phantom limb, the preponderance of feelings associated with him were painful.
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Sarah Dunn
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Sit, Phantom!" Ivy cooed. "On your bottom!" "Oh, for goodness' sake!" Gabriel put down his book and pointed a longer finger at Phantom. "Sit," he commanded in a deep voice. Phantom looked sheepish and sank straight to the floor. Ivy scowled in frustration. "I've been trying to get him to do that all day! What is it with dogs and male authority?
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Alexandra Adornetto (Halo (Halo, #1))
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Krishna was once asked what was the most miraculous thing in all creation, and he replied, "That a man should wake each morning and believe deep in his heart that he will live forever, even though he knows that he is doomed.
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Christopher Pike (Phantom (The Last Vampire, #4))
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None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom, or indifference over his inward joy.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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Erik: Are you very tired? Christine: Oh, tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead. Erik: Your soul is a beautiful thing, child. No emperor received so fair a gift. The angels wept to-night.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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They played at hearts as other children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two hearts that they flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to catch them, each time, without hurting them.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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When the river of emotions bursts its banks and expectations go over the edges of reality, the brain creates hallucinations. Ringxiety-stricken people feel illusive vibrating alerts and hear phantom phone rings, since absence of ringing generates scaring emptiness and destroys their self-esteem. ("Kein Schwein ruft mich an" )
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Erik Pevernagie
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A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'some one,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost...
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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Our lives are one masked ball.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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Things which are equally bad are also equally good. Try to look at the bright side of things. - Humbug
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Through dreams and ideas we are seduced to go back to particular places and instances of our past. In the course of the years, these singular moments and spaces of our history very often receive then another color and dimension. Our mind tries however to tame and keep in control the phantoms of times past. If not so, our memory can be subject to an irreversible mutilation. ( "The mutilated memory" )
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Erik Pevernagie
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...it's very much like your trying to reach infinity. You know that it's there, you just don't know where-but just because you can never reach it doesn't mean that it's not worth looking for.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Let me try once more," Milo said in an effort to explain. "In other words--" "You mean you have other words?" cried the bird happily. "Well, by all means, use them. You're certainly not doing very well with the ones you have now.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Blood!...Blood!... That's a good thing! A ghost who bleeds is less dangerous!
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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If we are erring through a wasteland of memories, missing all the appointments with love, we must decide to give up the crusades against the figments in our thinking pattern. We cannot allow the draconian phantoms of the past to possess our thoughts and colonize our life. (β€œNot without the past”)
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Erik Pevernagie
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I am Adelina Amouteru, the phantoms whispered to my father, speaking my most frightening thoughts in a chorus of voices, dripping with hatred. My hatred. I belong to no one. On this night, I swear to you that I will rise above everything you’ve ever taught me. I will become a force that this world has never known. I will come into such power that none will dare hurt me again.
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Marie Lu (The Young Elites (The Young Elites, #1))
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Love me - that's all I ask of you.
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Charles Hart (The Phantom of the Opera: Piano/Vocal)
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It's better to die in pursuit of your dreams than to live a life without hope.
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Terry Brooks (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (Star Wars Novelizations, #1))
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You may not see it now," said the Princess of Pure Reason, looking knowingly at Milo's puzzled face, "but whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world; when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more; and when you stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off its course. Whenever you laugh, gladness spreads like the ripples in the pond; and whenever you're sad, no one anywhere can be really happy. And it's much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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What you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise. She would find it increasingly exhausting to conjure up, to dust off, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There would come a day, in fact, years later, when [she] would no longer bewail his loss. Or not as relentlessly; not nearly. There would come a day when the details of his face would begin to slip from memory's grip, when overhearing a mother on the street call after her child by [his] name would no longer cut her adrift. She would not miss him as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion--like the phantom pain of an amputee.
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Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
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I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men. I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that have ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room -- room for the human mind.
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Robert G. Ingersoll (The Ghosts and Other Lectures)
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Humans are suspicious and jealous creatures. When they see something perfect, they want to find a flaw.
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Gosho Aoyama (Detective Conan: Showdown with the Phantom Thief Kid Special Edition)
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...I'll continue to see things as a child. It's not so far to fall.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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She's singing to-night to bring the chandelier down!
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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It has been a long trip," said Milo, climbing onto the couch where the princesses sat; "but we would have been here much sooner if I hadn't made so many mistakes. I'm afraid it's all my fault." "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.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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And Celaena felt it. She felt each footstep, the phantom bruises on her face throbbing with the memory of Arobynn's fists. And suddenly, as the memory of that day echoed through her, she remembered the words Sam kept screaming at Arobynn as the king of the Assassins beat her, the words that she somehow forgotten in the fog of pain: 'I'll kill you!' Sam has said it like he meant it. He'd bellowed it. Again and again and again.
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Sarah J. Maas (The Assassin and the Desert (Throne of Glass, #0.3))
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They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.
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Patrick Henry
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She Was A Phantom of Delight She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleam'd upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament: Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay. I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman too! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food, For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine; A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveller between life and death: The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect Woman, nobly plann'd To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of an angel light.
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William Wordsworth
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And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiancies shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotuslands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. I could hear an indescribable seething roar which wasn't in my ear but everywhere and had nothing to do with sounds. I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it. I realized it was only because of the stability of the intrinsic Mind that these ripples of birth and death took place, like the action of the wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like water. I felt sweet, swinging bliss, like a big shot of heroin in the mainline vein; like a gulp of wine late in the afternoon and it makes you shudder; my feet tingled. I thought I was going to die the very next moment. But I didn't die...
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Jack Kerouac (On the Road (The Viking Critical Library))
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For instance," said the boy again, "if Christmas trees were people and people were Christmas trees, we'd all be chopped down, put up in the living room, and covered in tinsel, while the trees opened our presents." "What does that have to do with it?" asked Milo. "Nothing at all," he answered, "but it's an interesting possibility, don't you think?
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Look!You want to see? See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like? Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I'm a good-looking fellow, eh?...When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me.She loves me forever! I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!...Look at me! I am Don Juan Triumphant! -Erik in The Phantom of the Opera
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Gaston Leroux
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What grinds me the most is we're sending kids out into the world who don't know how to balance a checkbook, don't know how to apply for a loan, don't even know how to properly fill out a job application, but because they know the quadratic formula we consider them prepared for the world` With that said, I'll admit even I can see how looking at the equation x -3 = 19 and knowing x =22 can be useful. I'll even say knowing x =7 and y= 8 in a problem like 9x - 6y= 15 can be helpful. But seriously, do we all need to know how to simplify (x-3)(x-3i)?? And the joke is, no one can continue their education unless they do. A student living in California cannot get into a four-year college unless they pass Algebra 2 in high school. A future psychologist can't become a psychologist, a future lawyer can't become a lawyer, and I can't become a journalist unless each of us has a basic understanding of engineering. Of course, engineers and scientists use this shit all the time, and I applaud them! But they don't take years of theater arts appreciation courses, because a scientist or an engineer doesn't need to know that 'The Phantom of the Opoera' was the longest-running Broadway musical of all time. Get my point?
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Chris Colfer (Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal (The Land of Stories))
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And remember, also," added the Princess of Sweet Rhyme, "that many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you'll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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So just tell me what you like on the menu, and we'll negotiate." All that is required is that you taste what is ordered. You do not have to eat it." No, no more of this tasting shit. I've gained weight. I never gain weight." You have gained four pounds, so I am told. Though I have searched diligently for this phantom four pounds and cannot find them. It brings your weight up to a grand total of one hundred and ten pounds, correct?" That's right." Oh, ma petite, you are growing gargantuan." I looked at him, and it was not a friendly look.
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Laurell K. Hamilton (Burnt Offerings (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #7))
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All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely pre-ambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasent life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was - a woman.
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Washington Irving (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)
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Too many years fighting back tears. Why can't the past just die? Wishing you were somehow here again, knowing we must say goodbye. Try to forgive, teach me to live, give me the strength to try! No more memories, no more silent tears, no more gazing across the wasted years. Help me say goodbye.
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Charles Hart (The Phantom of the Opera: Piano/Vocal)
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Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was as golden as the sun's rays, and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes. She wheedled her mother, was kind to her doll, took great care of her frock and her red shoes and her fiddle, but loved most of all, when she went to sleep, to hear the Angel of Music.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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I am going to die of love....daroga....I am dying of love .... That's how it is... I loved her so! And I love her still...daroga.....and I am dying of love for her, I tell you! if you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her...It was the first ...time, daroga, the first time I ever kissed a woman.. Yes, alive... I kissed her alive.... And she looked as beautiful as if she had been dead!
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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Now I want to live like everybody else. I want to have a wife like everybody else and to take her out on Sundays. I have invented a mask that makes me look like anybody. People will not even turn round in the streets. You will be the happiest of women. And we will sing, all by ourselves, till we swoon away with delight. You are crying! You are afraid of me! And yet I am not really wicked. Love me and you shall see! All I wanted was to be loved for myself. If you loved me I should be as gentle as a lamb; and you could do anything with me that you pleased.
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Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
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In this box are all the words I know…Most of them you will never need, some you will use constantly, but with them you may ask all the questions which have never been answered and answer all the questions which have never been asked. All the great books of the past and all the ones yet to come are made with these words. With them there is no obstacle you cannot overcome. All you must learn to do is to use them well and in the right places.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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Would it be possible for me to see something from up there?" asked Milo politely. "You could," said Alec, "but only if you try very hard to look at things as an adult does." Milo tried as hard as he could, and, as he did, his feet floated slowly off the ground until he was standing in the air next to Alex Bings. He looked around very quickly and, an instant later, crashed back down to the earth again. "Interesting, wasn't it?" asked Alex. "Yes, it was," agreed Milo, rubbing his head and dusting himself off, "but I think I'll continue to see things as a child. It's not so far to fall.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
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There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure their pain.
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Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
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It's a thought," I said with a grin. "That's exactly what it is, Dan - a thought - no more real than the shadow of a shadow. Consciousness is not In the body; the body is In Consciousness. And you Are that Consciousness - no the phantom mind that troubles you so. You are the body, but you are everything else, too. That is what your visions revealed to you. Only the mind resists change. When you relax mindless into the body, you are happy and content and free, sensing no separation. Immortality is Already yours, but not in the same way you imagined or hope for. You have been immortal since before you were born and will be long after the body dissolves. The body is in Consciousness; never born; never dies; only changes. The mind - your ego, personal beliefs, history, and identity - is all that ends at death. And who needs it?" Socrates leaned back into his chair. "I'm not sure all of that sank in." "Of course not." He laughed. "Words mean little unless you realize the truth of it yourself. And when you do, you'll be free at last.
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Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives)
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For us, eating and being eaten belong to the terrible secret of love. We love only the person we can eat. The person we hate we β€˜can’t swallow.’ That one makes us vomit. Even our friends are inedible. If we were asked to dig into our friend’s flesh we would be disgusted. The person we love we dream only of eating. That is, we slide down that razor’s edge of ambivalence. The story of torment itself is a very beautiful one. Because loving is wanting and being able to eat up and yet to stop at the boundary. And there, at the tiniest beat between springing and stopping, in rushes fear. The spring is already in mid-air. The heart stops. The heart takes off again. Everything in love is oriented towards this absorption. At the same time real love is a don’t-touch, yet still an almost-touching. Tact itself: a phantom touching. Eat me up, my love, or else I’m going to eat you up. Fear of eating, fear of the edible, fear on the part of the one of them who feels loved, desired, who wants to be loved, desired, who desires to be desired, who knows there is no greater proof of love than the other’s appetite, who is dying to be eaten up, who says or doesn’t say, but who signifies: I beg you, eat me up. Want me down to the marrow. And yet manage it so as to keep me alive. But I often turn about or compromise, because I know that you won’t eat me up, in the end, and I urge you: bite me. Sign my death with your teeth
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Hélène Cixous (Stigmata: Escaping Texts)
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Once upon a time, before chimaera and seraphim, there was the sun and the moons. The sun was betrothed to Nitid, the bright sister, but it was demure Ellai, always hiding behind her bold sister, who stirred his lust. He contrived upon her bathing in the sea and he took her. She struggled, but he was the sun, and he thought he should have what he wanted. Ellai stabbed him and escaped, and the blood of the sun flew like sparks to earth, where it became seraphim- misbegotten children of fire. And like their father, they believed it their due to want, and take, and have. As for Ellai, she told her sister what had passed, and Nitid wept, and her tears fell to earth and became chimeara, children of regret. When the sun came again to the sisters, neither would have him. Nitid put Ellai behind her and protected her, though the sun, still bleeding sparks, knew Ellai was not as defenseless as she seemed. He plead with Nitid to forgive him but she refused, and to this day he follows the sisters across the sky, wanting and wanting and never having, and that will be his punishment, forever. Nitid is the goddess of tears and life, hunts and war, and her temples are too many to count. It is she who fills wombs, slows the hearts of the dying, and leads her children against the serephim. Her light is like a small sun; she chases away shadows. Ellai is more subtle. She is a trace, a phantom moon, and there are only a handful of nights she alone takes the sky. There are called Ellai nights, and they are dark and star-scattered and good for furtive things. Ellai is the goddes of assassins and secret lovers. Temples to her are few, and hidden, like the one in the requiem grove in the hills above Loramendi.
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Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
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As the cheering continued, Rhyme leaned forward and touched Milo gently on the shoulder. "They're cheering for you," she said with a smile. "But I could never have done it," he objected, "without everyone else's help." "That may be true," said Reason gravely, "but you had the courage to try; and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you *will* do." "That's why," said Azaz, "there was one very important thing about your quest that we couldn't discuss until you returned. "I remember," said Milo eagerly. "Tell me now." "It was impossible," said the king, looking at the Mathemagician. "Completely impossible," said the Mathemagician, looking at the king. "Do you mean----" said the bug, who suddenly felt a bit faint. "Yes, indeed," they repeated together; "but if we'd told you then, you might not have gone---and, as you've discovered, so many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible." And for the remainder of the ride Milo didn't utter a sound.
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Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)