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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 8h

"If you had high hopes, how would you know how high they were? And did you know that narrow escapes come in all different widths? Would you travel the whole wide world without ever knowing how wide it was?”

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 11h

"NOT IMPORTANT!" roared the Dodecahedron, turning red with fury. "Could you have tea for two without the two—or three blind mice without the three? Would there be four corners of the earth if there weren't a four? And how would you sail the seven seas without a seven?"

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 14h

"But if all the roads arrive at the same place at the same time, then aren't they all the right way?" asked Milo.

"Certainly not!" he shouted, glaring from his most upset face. "They're all the wrong way. Just because you have a choice, it doesn't mean that any of them has to be right."

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 17h

"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."

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 1d

“Why, did you know that if a beaver two feet long with a tail a foot and a half long can build a dam twelve feet high and six feet wide in two days, all you would need to build Boulder Dam is a beaver sixty-eight feet long with a fifty-one-foot tail?"

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 1d

"My angles are many.
My sides are not few.
I'm the Dodecahedron.
Who are you?"

"What's a Dodecahedron?" inquired Milo, who was barely able to pronounce the strange word.

"See for yourself," he said, turning around slowly. "A Dodecahedron is a mathematical shape with twelve faces."

The dodecahedron: a man in court attire, wearing a beret, but whose head is shaped like a dodecahedron, with one face (eyes, nose, mouth) on each side.

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 1d

"Let's travel by miles," advised the Humbug; "it's shorter."
"Let's travel by half inches," suggested Milo; "it's quicker."

DIGITOPOLIS
5 Miles
1,600 Rods
8,800 Yards
26,400 Feet
316,800 Inches
633,600 Half inches
AND THEN SOME

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 1d

“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."

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 2d

"I don't like to get wet," moaned the unhappy bug, and he shuddered at the thought.

"Neither do they," said Canby sadly. "That's what keeps them here. But I wouldn't worry too much about it, for you can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely dry. Most people do.”

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 2d

"You're on the Island of Conclusions. Make yourself at home. You're apt to be here for some time."

"But how did we get here?" asked Milo, who was still a bit puzzled by being there at all.

"You jumped, of course," explained Canby. "That's the way most everyone gets here."

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 2d

"It's really very simple," said the Humbug, twirling his cane.

"If everything you say is true," added Tock.

"Then, without a doubt," Milo concluded brightly, "you must be Canby."

"Of course, yes, of course," the man shouted. "Why didn't I think of that? I'm as happy as can be."

A man in a tweed blazer and a funny cap, laying on his back, curing up and grabbing his shoe

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 2d

"It certainly couldn't be a nicer day," agreed Milo, who was too busy looking at the road to see that the others had gone. And in a split second he was gone also.

The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 3d

"And we'll have plenty of time," answered Tock, who hadn't noticed that the bug was missing-and he, too, suddenly leaped into the air and disappeared.

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 3d

"Nothing can possibly go wrong now," cried the Humbug happily and as soon as he'd said it he leaped from the car, as if stuck by a pin, and sailed all the way to the little island.

The Humbug, flying through the air away from the car and towards an island

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 3d

“Here are street noises at night, train whistles a long way off, dry leaves burning, busy department stores, crunching toast, creaking bedsprings, and, of course, all kinds of laughter. There's a little of each, and in far-off lonely places I think you'll be glad to have them."

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 3d

Milo stood on tiptoe, leaned over into the cannon's mouth, and parted his lips. The small sound dropped silently to the bottom and everything was ready. In another moment the fuse was lit and sputtering.

Milo whispers the word “but” into a cannon

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 4d

"Right over here-we weave it on our looms. Symphonies are the large beautiful carpets with all the rhythms and melodies woven in. Concertos are these tapestries, and all the other bolts of cloth are serenades, waltzes, overtures, and rhapsodies."

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 4d

"Do you know what a handclap looks like?"

Milo shook his head.

"Try it," she commanded.

He clapped his hands once and a single sheet of clean white paper fluttered to the floor. He tried it three more times and three more sheets of paper did the very same thing.

Milo, clapping, with sheets of paper in the air all around him.

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 4d

or the expectant pause in a roomful of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're all alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully."

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 4d

"Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn?" she inquired. "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,

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 5d

"Isn't that lovely? It's my favorite program-fifteen minutes of silence-and after that there's a half hour of quiet and then an interlude of lull. Why, did you know that there are almost as many kinds of stillness as there are sounds? But, sadly enough, no one pays any attention to them these days.”

The Soundkeeper: a woman sitting in a chair, with a tall pointy hat, listening to a speaker with a bunch of dials and knobs below it.

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 5d

Within a few minutes he stood bravely at the fortress door. "Knock, knock," he wrote neatly on a piece of paper, which he pushed under the crack. In a moment the great portal swung open

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 5d

"People laughed less and grumbled more, sang less and shouted more, and the sounds they made grew louder and uglier. It became difficult to hear even the birds or the breeze, and soon everyone stopped listening for them."

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 5d

He paused again as a tear of longing rolled from cheek to lip with the sweet-salty taste of an old memory.

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The Phantom Tollbooth Quotes @phantomtollbot.bsky.social · 6d

"She provided us with all the sound we could possibly use: for singing as we worked, for bubbling pots of stew, for the chop of an ax and the crash of a tree, for the creak of a hinge and the hoot of an owl, for the squish of a shoe in the mud and the friendly tapping of rain on the roof”

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