Phantom Tollbooth

Some bad ass shit



"Pardon me," said Milo to the first man who happened by; "can you tell me where I am?"

"To be sure," said Canby; "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. 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."

"But this is such an unpleasant-looking place," Milo remarked.

"Yes, that's true," admitted Canby; "it does look much better from a distance."

As he spoke, at least eight or nine more people sailed onto the island from every direction possible.

"Well, I'm going to jump right back," announced the Humbug, who took two or three practice bends, leaped as far as he could, and landed in a heap two feet away.

"That won't do at all," scolded Canby, helping him to his feet. "You can never jump away from Conclusions. Getting back is not so easy. That's why we're so terribly crowded here."


Here's some other quotes:

Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going. Of course, some people never go beyond Expectations, but my job is to hurry them along whether they like it or not.

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.

So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.

What you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.

But it's not just learning that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn at all that matters.

Whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else.

You know that it's there, but you just don't know where - but just because you can never reach it doesn't mean that it's not worth looking for.

Many of the things which can never be, often are.

If you want sense, you'll have to make it yourself.

The way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.

Why not? That's a good reason for almost anything - a bit used perhaps, but still quite serviceable.

Well, since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking.

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.


I'm about to post more quotes.

"Well, if you can't laugh or think, what can you do?" asked Milo.
"Anything as long as it's nothing, and everything as long as it isn't anything," explained another. "There's lots to do; we have a very busy schedule-

"At 8 o'clock we get up, and then we spend

"From 8 to 9 daydreaming.

"From 9 to 9:30 we take our early midmorning nap.

"From 9:30 to 10:30 we dawdle and delay.

"From 10:30 to 11:30 we take our late early morning nap.

"From ll:00 to 12:00 we bide our time and then eat lunch.

"From l:00 to 2:00 we linger and loiter.

"From 2:00 to 2:30 we take our early afternoon nap.

"From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today.

"From 3:30 to 4:00 we take our early late afternoon nap.

"From 4:00 to 5:00 we loaf and lounge until dinner.

"From 6:00 to 7:00 we dillydally.

"From 7:00 to 8:00 we take our early evening nap, and then for an hour before we go to bed at 9:00 we waste time.

"As you can see, that leaves almost no time for brooding, lagging, plodding, or procrastinating, and if we stopped to think or laugh, we'd never get nothing done."

"You mean you'd never get anything done," corrected Milo.

"We don't want to get anything done," snapped another angrily; "we want to get nothing done, and we can do that without your help."

"You see," continued another in a more conciliatory tone, "it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?"

"I might as well," thought Milo; "that's where I seem to be going anyway."

"Are you a doctor?" asked Milo, trying to feel as well as possible.
"I am KAKOFONOUS A. DISCHORD, DOCTOR OF DISSONANCE," roared the man, and, as he spoke, several small explosions and a grinding crash were heard.

"What does the 'A' stand for?" stammered the nervous bug, too frightened to move.

"AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE," bellowed the doctor, and two screeches and a bump accompanied his response. "Now, step a little closer and stick out your tongues.

"Just as I suspected," he continued, opening a large dusty book and thumbing through the pages. "You're suffering from a severe lack of noise."

He began to jump around the wagon, snatching bottles from the shelves until he had a large assortment in various colors and sizes collected at one end of the table. All were neatly labeled: Loud Cries, Soft Cries, Bangs, Bongs, Smashes, Crashes, Swishes, Swooshes, Snaps and Crackles, Whistles and Gongs, Squeaks, Squawks, and Miscellaneous Uproar. After pouring a little of each into a large glass beaker, he stirred the mixture thoroughly with a wooden spoon, watching intently as it smoked and steamed and boiled and bubbled.

"Be ready in just a moment," he explained, rubbing his hands.

"I can hardly see a thing," said Milo, taking hold of Tock's tail as a sticky mist engulfed the moon. "Perhaps we should wait until morning."

"They'll be mourning for you soon enough," came a reply from directly above, and this was followed by a hideous cackling laugh very much like someone choking on a fishbone. "I don't think you understand," said Milo timidly as the watchdog growled a warning. "We're looking for a place to spend the night."

"It's not yours to spend," the bird shrieked again, and followed it with the same horrible laugh.

"That doesn't make any sense, you see--" he started to explain.

"Dollars or cents, it's still not yours to spend," the bird replied haughtily.

"But I didn't mean--" insisted Milo.

"Of course you're mean," interrupted the bird, closing the eye that had been open and opening the one that had been closed. "Anyone who'd spend a night that doesn't belong to him is very mean."

"Well, I thought that by--" he tried again desperately.

"That's a different story," interjected the bird a bit more amiably. "If you want to buy, I'm sure I can arrange to sell, but with what you're doing you'll probably end up in a cell anyway."

"That doesn't seem right," said Milo helplessly, for, with the bird taking everything the wrong way, he hardly knew what he was saying.

"Agreed," said the bird, with a sharp click of his beak, "but neither is it left, although if I were you I would have left a long time ago."

"Let me try once more," he 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."

"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."

"But there's so much to learn," he said, with a thoughtful frown. "That's just what I mean," explained Milo, as Tock and the exhausted bug drifted quietly off to sleep. "Many of the things I'm supposed to know seem so useless that I can't see the purpose in learning them at all."

"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 a 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."

"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."

My dad read this with us when we were little. I'm going to read it again soon.

Milo - The main character, Milo is a little boy who goes through all of his days in a state of horrible boredom. This routine changes when Milo takes a trip through the mysterious make-believe tollbooth that appears in his bedroom one day.

Tock - Milo's friend Tock is a literally a "watchdog." A giant clock makes up part of his body, and he constantly makes ticking noises. He patrols the Doldrums and stops people from wasting time.

The Humbug - The Humbug is an insect who lives only to flatter people—especially himself. The Humbug is ignorant about everything from math to geography and proves himself the fool by his constant attempts to say intelligent things. After trying to brown-nose his way to favor with King Azaz, he accompanies Milo and Tock on their journey.

King Azaz - King Azaz is ruler of the realm of letters and words. Azaz and his brother argue over which is more important—numbers or letters, and they banish the princesses Rhyme and Reason. Once he realizes the foolishness of his squabble, King Azaz sends Milo to rescue the princesses.

The Mathemagician - Azaz's brother, the Mathemagician, lives in a world of numbers. Unlike Azaz, the Mathemagician has doubts about releasing Rhyme and Reason.

Rhyme and Reason - The two princesses were adopted by the King of Wisdom and raised alongside Azaz and the Mathemagician. When Azaz and the Mathemagician asked them to determine whether numbers or letters are more important, Rhyme and Reason say each is equally valuable. The brothers then imprisoned the two princesses in the Castle in the Air.

Faintly Macabre - The Which, Faintly Macabre, has been imprisoned since Rhyme and Reason disappeared. It was once her duty to select the words to use for every occasion, but she became corrupted by her power and began to horde the words for herself. Faintly tells Milo the story of the imprisoned princesses and inspires him to broach the subject with King Azaz.

Alec Bings - Milo first meets Alec Bings in the Forest of Sight, where Milo sees a boy floating several feet off the ground. Alec explains that in his family, everyone's head remains at the same height from the day they are born until the day they die and that their legs grow toward the ground. Alec has the special ability to "see through things" and can see anything except that which is right before his eyes.

Chroma - Conductor of the great color orchestra in the Forest of Sight, Chroma makes sure all the colors of the day are properly handled. When he decides to take a rest, Milo makes a mess of the colors of the day.

Dischord and Dynne - Dr. Dischord, a quack doctor, prescribes medicines of terrible noises to all of his patients and has an assistant, a smoke monster named Dynne. Dischord and Dynne invent new sounds, peddle noise pulls, racket lotions, clamor salves and hubbub tonics in the Valley of Sound.

The Soundkeeper - Once ruler of the Valley of Sound, the Soundkeeper becomes dismayed with the lack of appreciation of beautiful sounds and the rise of Dr. Dischord's terrible practice. In protest, she cuts off sound and retreats to the fortress where she keeps all sounds made since the beginning of time.

The Dodecahedron - The Dodecahedron has twelve different faces wearing twelve different emotions. He leads Milo and his companions through the numbers mine, where workers chisel out gemlike digits, to the city of Digitopolis.

The Everpresent Wordsnatcher - More nuisance than demon, the Everpresent Wordsnatcher is a bird who flutters around the Mountains of Ignorance turning the words of others around to illustrate his own cleverness.

The Terrible Trivium - The Terrible Trivium is a demon with no facial features. He lives in the Mountains of Ignorance and preys upon travellers, convincing them to undertake tasks that can never be completed.

The Demon of Insincerity - The Demon of Insincerity looks like a cross between a beaver and a kangaroo. He tries to scare Milo and his companions off their path through the Mountains of Ignorance by throwing half-truths at them, which are only dispelled when they see this demon for what he really is.

The Gelatinous Giant - The Gelatinous Giant is so huge that Milo first mistakes him for a mountain. He is the epitome of spinelessness. He hides in the Mountains of Ignorance and tries to look exactly like everything around him because he thinks it is "unsafe" to be different.

The Senses Taker - The Senses Taker spends his days in the Castle in the Air trying to rob people of their senses by bombarding them with detailed questions. His appearance as an ink-stained old man perched over an enormous book deceives Milo into thinking his purpose is anything other than wasting time.

Officer Shrift - Officer Shrift is twice as wide as he is tall. In Dictionopolis, he works as a police officer, judge, and jailer all at the same time. Officer Shrift has a habit of sentencing people to millions of years in prison then immediately forgetting about them.

The Whether Man - A peculiar fellow who says everything three times, the Whether Man is the caretaker of Expectations. He is so busy thinking about what could be and why that he never seems to go anywhere or get anything done.

The Lethargians - The Lethargians, minute creatures, live in perpetual boredom in the Doldrums. They change colors to match their surroundings and sometimes enforce laws against thinking and laughing.

The Spelling Bee - Though he is a giant bee, the Spelling Bee is a self-taught master of spelling and enjoys randomly spelling the words he hears or speaks.

The Half Boy - The result of a statistic, the Half Boy is really the leftover .58 from the 2.58 children the average family has. He believes in the reality of averages and likes to spend his time on the staircase to Infinity.

STOP!!!! lol, too much man.

Sorry. It's some bad ass fuckin shit though. I'm glad my dad read this to me when I was a kid. It's amazing.

Finshaggy said:

Sorry. It's some bad ass fuckin shit though. I'm glad my dad read this to me when I was a kid. It's amazing.

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Lol, it's cool. It's just alot to read right now. It's some pretty interesting shit though.

I'm gonna get the book as soon as I can.

Finshaggy said:

I'm gonna get the book as soon as I can.

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It actually seems pretty cool, I might go pick it up.