Lemony Snicket Quotes

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.

It is always better to ask a question than to answer one.

What do your parents know, about surviving?

Yes, I know," Isadora said, and then read her poem, leaning forward so Carmelita Spats would not overhear:"I would rather eat a bowl of vampire batsthan spend an hour with Carmelita Spats."The Baudelaires giggled and then covered their mouths so nobody would know they were laughing at Carmelita."That was great," Klaus said. "I like the part about the bowl of bats.

The trouble with being patient is that eventually you get tired of it.

Siblings that say they never fight are most definitely hiding something

I will love you as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey.

The only thing worse than a perilous adventure is a boring one.

I'm jealous of your hooks," Kevin replied. "Having no hands is better than having two equally strong hands."Don't be ridiculous," one of the white-faced women replied. "Having a white face is worse than both of your situations."But you have a white face because you put makeup on," Colette said, as Sunny climbed back out of the trunk and knelt down in the snow. "You're putting powder on your face right now.

The sea is nothing but a library of all the tears in history.

...you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit.

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.

Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you'd see.

If you are going to hear the work of the world’s greatest composers, you will have to allow for a little murder here and there. […] Those who want justice can go to the police, but those who want something a little more interesting should go to the orchestra!

There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don't.

There are few sights sadder than a ruined book.

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.

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.

Count Olaf sounds like an awful person. I hope he is torn apart by wild animals someday. Wouldn't that be satisfying?

everything happens for a reason.

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

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.

Keep anyone with whom you can read in silence.

One of the world's most tiresome questions is what object one would bring to a desert island,because people always answer "a deck of cards" or "Anna Karenina" when the obvious answer is "a well equipped boat and a crew to sail me off the island and back home where I can play all the card games and read all the Russian novels I want.

For Beatrice, when we first met, I was lonely, and you were pretty.Now I am pretty lonely.

There was a bag of coffee beans beneath a harpoon gun and a frozen hunk of spinach, but there was no way to grind the beans into tiny pieces to make coffee. Near a picnic basket and a large bag of mushrooms was a jug of orange juice, but it had been close to one of the bullet holes in the trunk, and so had frozen completely solid in the cold. And after Sunny moved aside three chunks of cold cheese, a large can of water chestnuts, and an eggplant as big as herself, she finally found a small jar of boysenberry jam, and a loaf of bread she could use to make toast, although it was so cold it felt more like a log than a breakfast ingredient.

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down.

It is a curious thing, but as one travels the world getting older and older, it appears that happiness is easier to get used to than despair. The second time you have a root beer float, for instance, your happiness at sipping the delicious concoction may not be quite as enormous as when you first had a root beer float, and the twelfth time your happiness may be still less enormous, until root beer floats begin to offer you very little happiness at all, because you have become used to the taste of vanilla ice cream and root beer mixed together. However, the second time you find a thumbtack in your root beer float, your despair is much greater than the first time, when you dismissed the thumbtack as a freak accident rather than part of the scheme of a soda jerk, a phrase which here means "ice cream shop employee who is trying to injure your tongue," and by the twelfth time you find a thumbtack, your despair is even greater still, until you can hardly utter the phrase "root beer float" without bursting into tears. 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.

Moxie gave me a small smile. "Why do you always say that- which here means?""I'll probably outgrow it," I said.

Like many people who dress in black, the lump of coal was interested in becoming an artist.

Of course you can trust me," Jake Hix said. "We read the same books.

This is my knife. It is very sharp and very eager to hurt you.

It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.

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.

There's no way to tell what will make someone break down in tears. There are some who will cry at the merest melancholy word, and there are some who need the longest, cruelest speech to even dampen one eyelash. There are those who will cry at any sad song but no sad book, and there are those who are immune to the most saddening newspaper articles but will weep for days over a terrible meal. People cry at silence or at violence, in a graveyard or a schoolyard.

Ellington Feint was a line in my mind running right down the middle of my life, separating the formal training of my childhood and the territory of the rest of my days. She was an axis, and at that moment and for many moments afterward, my entire world revolved around her.

That night was a dark day. Of course, all nights are dark days, because night is simply a badly lit version of day, ...

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.

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.

In any case, this is how all our stories begin, in darkness with our eyes closed, and all our stories end the same way, too, with all of us uttering some last words—or perhaps someone else’s—before slipping back into darkness as our series of unfortunate events comes to an end.

They're book addicts.

At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.

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.

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.

My silence knot is tied up in my hair; as if to keep my love out of my eyes. I cannot speak to one for whom i care. A hatpin serves as part of my disguise. In the play, my role is baticeer; a word which here means "person who trains bats." The audience may feel a prick of fear, as if sharp pins are hidden in thier hats. My co-star lives on what we call a brae. His solitude might not be just an act. A piece of mail fails to arrive one day. This poignant melodrama's based on fact.The curtain falls just as the knot unties; the silence is broken by the one who dies.

Writing is a dying form. One reads of this every day.

It is always tedious when someone tells you that if you don't stop crying, they will give you something to cry about, because if you are crying then you already have something to cry about, and so there is no reason for them to give you anything additional to cry about, thank you very much.

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.

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.

But the three siblings were not born yesterday. Violet was born more than fifteen years before this particular Wednesday, and Klaus was born approximately two years after that, and even Sunny who had just passed out of babyhood, was not born yesterday. Neither were you, 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.

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.

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.

Sometimes, just saying that you hate something, and having someone agree with you, can make you feel better about a terrible situation.

Criminals should be punished, not fed pastries.

...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.

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.

Read about things that wouldn't keep you up all night long, weeping and tearing out your hair.

If you ask one question, it will lead you to another, and another. It's like peeling an onion.

It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus, and even Sunny felt in the time that followed. If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven't, you cannot possibly imagine it.

Of course, it is boring to read about boring thing, but it is better to read something that makes you yawn with boredom than something that will make you weep uncontrollably, pound your fists against the floor, and leave tearstains all over your pillowcase, sheets, and boomerang collection.