Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.
I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see.
For Beatrice, when we first met, I was lonely, and you were pretty.Now I am pretty lonely.
People aren’t either wicked or noble. They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.
There are times to stay put, and what you want will come to you, and there are times to go out into the world and find such a thing for yourself.
Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is, because you know people who have similar experiences.
Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.
I suppose I’ll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies.
If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf.
If you are a student you should always get a good nights sleep unless you have come to the good part of your book, and then you should stay up all night and let your schoolwork fall by the wayside, a phrase which means ‘flunk’.
For some stories, it’s easy. The moral of ‘The Three Bears,’ for instance, is “Never break into someone else’s house.’ The moral of ‘Snow White’ is ‘Never eat apples.’ The moral of World War I is ‘Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.
This is my knife. It is very sharp and very eager to hurt you.
Sometimes, just saying that you hate something, and having someone agree with you, can make you feel better about a terrible situation.
Siblings that say they never fight are most definitely hiding something
Those unable to catalog the past are doomed to repeat it.
Neither were you [born yesterday], unless of course I am wrong, in which case welcome to the world, little baby, and congratulations on learning to read so early in life.
Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course. Piracy, for example, is a tradition that has been carried on for hundreds of years, but that doesn’t mean we should all attack ships and steal their gold.
There is nothing particularly wrong with salmon, of course, but like caramel candy, strawberry yogurt, or liquid carpet cleaner, if you eat too much of it you are not going to enjoy your meal.
Just about everything in this world is easier said than done, with the exception of “systematically assisting Sisyphus’s stealthy, cyst-susceptible sister,” which is easier done than said.
Literature doesn’t exactly have a strong mental-health track record.
It is difficult, when faced with a situation you cannot control, to admit you can do nothing.
Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it isn’t so.
It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.
Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.
To hear the phrase “our only hope” always makes one anxious, because it means that if the only hope doesn’t work, there is nothing left.
I am heartbroken, but I have been heartbroken before, and this might be the best for which I can hope.
All cannot be lost when there is still so much being found
Writing is a dying form. One reads of this every day.
If you work hard, and become successful, it does not necessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard, just as if you are tall with long hair it doesn’t mean that you would be a midget if you were bald.
Santa Claus has nothing to do with it,” the latke said. “Christmas and Hanukah are completely different things.””But different things can often blend together,” said the pine tree. “Let me tell you a funny story about pagan rituals.
Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.
Tea should be as bitter as wormwod and as sharp as a two eged swordKit Snicket (a series of unfortunate events)
the table of elements does not contain one of the most powerful elements that make up our world, and that is the element of surprise.
Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.
There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many types of people, and everybody wants to read something different.
Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them
All his life, Klaus had believed that if you read enough books, you could solve any problem, but now he wasn’t so sure.
Klaus sighed, and opened a book, and as at so many other times when the middle Baudelaire child did not want to think about his circumstances, he began to read.
There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don’t.
Is it useful to feel fear, because it prepares you for nasty events, or is it useless, because nasty events will occur whether you are frightened or not?
You might be afraid of the dark, but the dark is not afraid of you. That’s why the dark is always close by.
Nothing firms up a friendship like a good-natured argument.
A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.
No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don’t read is often as important as what you do read.
Grinning is something you do when you are entertained in some way, such as reading a good book or watching someone you don’t care for spill orange soda all over themselves.
I’m not a stranger,” I said, and pointed to his book. “I’m someone who reads the same authors you do.
Just knowing that they could read made the Baudelaire orphans feel as if their wretched lives could be a little brighter.
The sea is nothing but a library of all the tears in history.
Nobody wants to fall into a safety net, because it means the structure in which they’ve been living is in a state of collapse and they have no choice but to tumble downwards. However, it beats the alternative.
It’s hard when you’re missing your family,” Pip said, and started the motor. ” You wake up every morning like someone took one of your legs.
It’s hard when you’re missing your family. You wake up every morning like someone took one of your legs.
Are you ready?” Klaus asked finally.”No,” Sunny answered.”Me neither,” Violet said, “but if we wait until we’re ready we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives, Let’s go.
Get scared later, and if you’re scared now remember what Kit always said. If you’re not scared, she told me, it’s not bravery. And you want to be brave, don’t you, Snicket?
How did you do that?” Mr. Poe asked. “Nice girls shouldn’t know how to do such things.”“My sister is a nice girl,” Klaus said, “and she knows how to do all sorts of things.
Some people think destiny is something you cannot escape, such as death or a curdled cheesecake, both of which always turn up sooner or later.
The story of the book filled the car with exciting adventures of the sort that are fun to read about, so we didn’t have to think about the exciting adventures of the sort that are no fun to live through.
Of course you can trust me,” Jake Hix said. “We read the same books.
it is a sad truth in life that when someone has lost a loved one, friends sometimes avoid the person, just when the presence of friends is most needed.
…It is a sad truth in life that when someone has lost a loved one, friends sometimes avoid the person, just when the presence of friends is most needed.
It doesn’t matter if you never see someone again, I told myself. There are millions of people in the world, and most of them never see each other in the first place.
There is no point in delaying crying. Sadness is like having a vicious alligator around. You can ignore it for only so long before it begins devouring things and you have to pay attention.
Everyone tells you it’s all right to cry, but not enough people say it’s all right if you don’t want people to know.
But like so many unfortunate events in life, just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it isn’t so.
We represent the true human condition, the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos. . . . Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is the wide-open world.
Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it isn’t so
It was a puzzle, a dark and lonely one, and if I were a piece in this puzzle, I did not know where it belonged. I needed to put myself aside, just for a little while, until I saw where I might fit in.
When you find the sort of people who will show up to give you a ride exactly when they’ve promised to do so, hold on to them for dear life.
The trouble with being patient is that eventually you get tired of it.
If you’re not scared, she told me, it’s not bravery.
It is unwise to make something permanent when the whole world is shifting.
But some secrets are so strange and so dangerous that showing them to people makes the strangeness and the danger pour into their lives like a dark, dark ink.
People who think nothing could go wrong are usually disappointed.
There are some things you cannot explain to anyone, even whey they have been explained to you, over and over, almost since the day you were born.
Are you saying that being a criminal is a matter of opinion?” I asked.Qwerty smiled, but it was sad around the edges. “No,” he said. “It’s a matter of handcuffs.
It was another thing you didn’t learn at a top-drawer school. Bickering is like baldness or lousy gifts. It runs in families.
It is good to brush your teeth when you are angry, because you brush harder and do a better job.
There are some people who believe that home is where one hangs one’s hat, but these people tend to live in closets and on little pegs.
Boredom is not black licorice, Snicket,” she said. “There’s no reason to share it with me.
The only thing worse than a perilous adventure is a boring one.
A new experience can be extremely pleasurable, or extremely irritating, or somewhere in between, and you never know until you try it out.
Instead of the word ‘love’ there was an enormous heart, a symbol sometimes used by people who have trouble figuring out the difference between words and shapes.
But the sad truth is that the truth is sad, and what you want does not matter
I hate it too,” Violet said, and Klaus looked at his older sister with relief. Sometimes, just saying that you hate something, and having someone agree with you, can make you feel better about a terrible situation.
Sunny did not eat the wood, of course, but she chewed on it and pretended it was a carrot, or an apple, or a beef and cheese enchilada, all of which she loved.
They were almond cookies, although they could have been made of spinach and shoes for all I cared. I ate eleven of them, right in a row. It is rude to take the last cookie.
You’re noble enough, Baudelaires. That’s all we can ask for in this world.
We don’t need a destination or a way of navigating, because we’ll go wherever it takes us
It is easy to decide on what is wrong to wear to a party, such as deep-sea diving equipment or a pair of large pillows, but deciding what is right is much trickier.
Whenever you are examining someone else’s belongings, you are bound to learn many interesting things about the person of which you were not previously aware.
We are respecting our parents’ wishes….They didn’t want to shelter us from the world’s treacheries. They wanted us to survive them.
Like many people who dress in black, the lump of coal was interested in becoming an artist.
There’s nothing wrong with athletics, but they shouldn’t get in the way of your schoolwork.
That night was a dark day. Of course, all nights are dark days, because night is simply a badly lit version of day, …
I think everyone’s parents have secrets. You just have to know where to look for them.
Reader: Dear Mr. Snicket, What is the best way to keep a secret? Lemony Snicket : Tell it to everyone you know, but pretend you are kidding.
We both wanted to know each other’s secrets, and we both wanted the other person to go first.
A secret note is secret. There is no reason to sign it.
Moxie gave me a small smile. “Why do you always say that- which here means?””I’ll probably outgrow it,” I said.
Being curious is the most important part of being a journalist. It might be the most important part of being anything.
If you ask one question, it will lead you to another, and another. It’s like peeling an onion.
Perhaps I should just bury myself and become a diamond after thousands of years of intense pressure
Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact.
In an emergency, one often learns that one’s companions can be of even less help in extraordinary circumstances than they are during an average evening.
People who think nothing can go wrong are usually disappointed.
When someone is crying, of course, the noble thing to do is to comfort them. But if someone is trying to hide their tears, it may also be noble to pretend you do not notice them.
…The sea… some have said is nothing but a library of all the tears in history.
Tears are curious things, for like earthquakes or puppet shows they can occur at any time, without any warning and without any good reason.
Sunny held Kit, and Violet held Klaus, and for a minute the four castaways did nothing but weep, letting their tears run down their faces and into the sea, which some have said is nothing but a library of all tears in history.
I will love you as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey.
Read about things that wouldn’t keep you up all night long, weeping and tearing out your hair.
I like a story that could never happen to me. If I want real life I’ll read a newspaper.
Wishing, like sipping a glass of punch, or pulling aside a bearskin rug in order to access a hidden trapdoor in the floor, is merely a quiet way to spend one’s time before the candles are extinguished on one’s birthday cake.
He looked like the sort of person who would tell you that he did not have an umbrella to lend you when he actually had several and simply wanted to see you get soaked.
Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you’d see.
The sky was dark blue twilight, pretty to look at but lonely to walk under.
With a library it is easier to hope for serendipity than to look for a precise answer.
The truth is that you can never be sure if you have decided on the right thing until the party is over, and by then it is too late to go back and change your mind, which is why the world is filled with people doing terrible things
An Overall Feeling of Doom that One Cannot Ever Escape no Matter What One Does
…There are almost as many kinds of libraries as there are kinds of readers.
You cannot have a really terrific library without at least one terrific librarian, the way you cannot have a really terrific bedroom unless you can lock the door.
Every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, “The world is quiet here,” as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.
…you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit.
It is always better to ask a question than to answer one.
I don’t know why wicked places generally look wicked. You’d think they’d look nice, to fool people, but they hardly ever do.
It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are really right and the person who is really wrong is proving you wrong and proving himself, wrongly, right.
..no matter how much one reads, the whole story can never be told.
Oftentimes. when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.
In some stories, it’s easy. The moral of “The Three Bears,” for instance, is “Never break into someone else’s house.” The moral of “Snow White” is “Never eat apples.” The moral of World War One is “Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.
People don’t always get what they deserve in this world.
Why does anyone have a lot of rules? So they can boss people around, I guess.
You would run much slower if you were dragging something behind you, like a knapsack or a sheriff.
The map is not the territory,” Snicket’s chaperon advises him. “That’s an expression which means the world does not match the picture in our heads.
This is an absurd moral, for you and I both know that sometimes not only is it good to lie, it is necessary to lie.
You don’t spend your life hanging around books without learning a thing or two.
One of the most difficult things to think about in life is one’s regrets. Something will happen to you, and you will do the wrong thing, and for years afterward you will wish you had done something different.
One of the most difficult things to think about in life is one’s regrets. Something will happen to you, and you will do the wrong thing, and for years afterward you will wish you had done something different.
The key to good eavesdropping is not getting caught.
Count Olaf sounds like an awful person. I hope he is torn apart by wild animals someday. Wouldn’t that be satisfying?