“Before that, my life was always agitated by a tangle of tricks, feints and illusions intended to outwit the countless lures that tried to turn me into anything but a writer.”

“Olaf: Of course I'm trying to trick you! That's the way of the world, Baudelaires. Everyone runs around with their secrets and their schemes, trying to outwit everyone else”

“For a writer, life is always too short to write. I will just try my best during what remains of my life.”

“And so it was when anyone tried to speak: their minds would become tangled in remembrance. Words became floods of thought with no beginning or end, and would drown the speaker before he could reach the life raft of the point he was trying to make. It was impossible to remember what one meant, what, after all of the words, was intended.”

“I don't have anything left. My strength is pouring out of me just as my blood is. I've been in a death-storm countless times before. Is this death in its true form?”

“Sometimes a writer, like an acrobat, must try a trick that is too much for him.”