“Other than a sign I saw once that said, 'Beware' in letters made of dead monkeys, the 'Lucky Smells Lumbermill' sign was the most disgusting sign on earth.”

“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.”

“If you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable. This is a difficult trick, and most people never master it, and end up dead or uncomfortable at least once during their lives.”

“Unless you have been very, very lucky, you have undoubtedly experienced events in your life that have made you cry. So unless you have been very, very lucky, you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit.”

“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.”

“A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled", describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used. The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn't hear him as he cried for help. Sure enough, that poet is dead.”

“Everything. A letter may be coded, and a word may be coded. A theatrical performance may be coded, and a sonnet may be coded, and there are times when it seems the entire world is in code. Some believe that the world can be decoded by performing research in a library. Others believe that the world can be decoded by reading a newspaper. In my case, the only thing that made sense of the world was you, and without you the world will seem as garbled and tragic as a malfunctioning typewrit9.”