The Mathemagician nodded knowingly and stroked his chin several times. โYouโll find,โ he remarked gently, โthat the only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and thatโs hardly worth the effort.
Norton JusterWhy, 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?" "Where would you find a beaver that big?" grumbled the Humbug as his pencil point snapped. "I'm sure I don't know," he replied, "but if you did, you'd certainly know what to do with him.
Norton JusterNo one paid any attention to how things looked, and as they moved faster and faster everything grew uglier and dirtier, and as everything grew uglier and dirtier they moved faster and faster, and at last a very strange thing began to happen. Because nobody cared, the city slowly began to disappear. Day by day the buildings grew fainter and fainter, and the streets faded away, until at last it was entirely invisible. There was nothing to see at all.
Norton JusterWhy not? That's a good reason for almost anything - a bit used perhaps, but still quite serviceable.
Norton JusterTo a child, and to an adult, too, what you discover by yourself, or what you think you discover by yourself, is what stays.
Norton JusterYou see, it's really quite simple. A simile is just a mode of comparison employing 'as' and 'like' to reveal the hidden character or essence of whatever we want to describe, and through the use of fancy, association, contrast, extension, or imagination, to enlarge our understanding or perception of human experience and observation.
Norton Juster