Lemony Snicket

“I’m reminded of a book my father used to read me,” she said. “A bunch of elves and things get into a huge war over a piece of jewelry that everybody wants but nobody can wear.”

“The moths were fluttering all over the sign at the desk that read DASHIELL QWERTY, SUB-LIBRARIAN. He was younger than I think of librarians as being, younger than the father of anyone I knew, and he had the hairstyle one gets if one is attacked by a scissors-carrying maniac and lives to tell the tale.”

“Stretched out in front of me was my time as an adult, and then a skeleton, and then nothing except perhaps a few books on a few shelves.”

“But the world did not match the picture in my head, and instead I was with a strange, uncombed person, overlooking a sea without water and a forest without trees.”

“It is very difficult to make one's way in this world without being wicked at one time or another, when the world's way is so wicked to being with.”

“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.”

“If you don’t care about something, one way to demonstrate your feelings is to say the word and then repeat the word with the letters S-C-H-M replacing the first letters. Somebody who didn’t care about dentists, for instance could say ‘Dentist, schmentists.”

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

“Various parts of my body told me that in the future they would appreciate it if I slept lying down on a bed instead of sitting at the counter of Black Cat Coffee. I quietly reassured them that this was an unusual situation, and had the machinery make me some bread as a breakfast.”

“I'm S. Theodora Markson," she said."I'm Lemony Snicket," I said, and handed her an envelope I had in my Pocket. Inside was something we called a letter of introduction, just a few paragraphs describing me as somebody who was an excellent reader, a good cook, a mediocre musician and an awful quarreler.”

“There are two good reasons to put your napkin in your lap. One is that food might spill in your lap, and it is better to stain the napkin than your clothing. The other is that it can serve as a perfect hiding place. Practically nobody is nosey enough to take the napkin off a lap to see what is hidden there.”

“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.”

“It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read.”

“He who hesitates is lost”

“What you don't read is often as important as what you do read.”

“This story is about the Baudelaires. And they are the sort of people who know that there’s always something. Something to invent, something to read, something to bite, and something to do, to make a sanctuary, no matter how small. And for this reason, I am happy to say, the Baudelaires were very fortunate indeed.”

“Literature doesn’t exactly have a strong mental-health track record.”

“They say in every library there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind.”

“Don’t repeat yourself. It’s not only repetitive, it’s redundant, and people have heard it before.”

“Knowing that something is wrong and doing it anyway happens very often in life, and I doubt I will ever know why.”

“A mystery is solved with a story.”

“The library was one enormous room, with long, high metal shelves and the perfect quiet that libraries provide for anyone looking for an answer.”

“It is very easy to say that the important thing is to try your best, but if you are in real trouble the most important thing is not trying your best, but getting to safety.”

“I think we'll always miss our parents. But I think we can miss them without being miserable all the time. After all, they wouldn't want us to be miserable.”

“The worst surroundings in the world can be tolerated if the people in them are interesting and kind.”

“In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle.”

“Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean that it's nonsense.”

“It is one of the peculiar truths of life that people often say things that they know full well are ridiculous.”

“Never, under any circumstances, let the Virginian wolfsnake near a typewriter.”

“Tears are curious things, for like earthquakes or puppet shows, they can occur at any time, without any warning and without any good reason.”

“The manager frowned, as if the middle Baudelaire had given him the wrong answer.That's the rooftop bathing salon," he said. "People who sunbathe aren't usually interested in library science, so they're not picky about the salon's location. Now get moving!”

“There is no way of knowing for sure whether or not you can trust someone, for the simple reason that circumstances change all of the time.”

“For Beatrice-When we were together I felt breathless.Now you are.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Every problem has a solution. Sometimes it just takes a long time to find the solution -- even if it's right in front of your nose.”

“Besides getting several paper cuts in the same day or receiving the news that someone in your family has betrayed you to your enemies, one of the most unpleasant experiences in life is a job interview.”

“There are some things we might not know, but that doesn't mean we should give up. We can find out what we need to know. We can find out everything”

“In times of extreme stress, one can often find energy hidden in even the most exhausted areas of the body.”

“I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.”

“Summer seems so cold without you, winter is even colder.”

“It is true, of course, that there is no way of knowing for sure whether or not you can trust someone, for the simple reason that circumstances change all of the time. You might know someone for several years, for instance, and trust him completely as your friend, but circumstances could change and he could become very hungry, and before you knew it you could be boiling in a soup pot, because there is no way of knowing for sure.”

“I didn't realize this was a sad occasion.”

“First impressions are often entirely wrong.”

“There are many things in life that become different if you take a long look at them.”

“Troublesome things tend to remain troublesome no matter how many times you do them.”

“If everyone fought fire with fire, the whole world would go up in smoke.”

“It doesn't take courage to kill someone,' Klaus said. 'It takes a severe lack of moral stamina.”

“For Beatrice, I cherished, you perished,The world's been nightmarished.”

“An Overall Feeling of Doom that One Cannot Ever Escape no Matter What One Does”