Quotes by Lemony Snicket

Theres 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.

If youre not scared, she told me, its 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. Its a matter of handcuffs.

It was another thing you didnt 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 ones hat, but these people tend to live in closets and on little pegs.

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.

Boredom is not black licorice, Snicket, she said. Theres no reason to share it with me.

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

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.

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.

As Im sure you know, there are two types of What? in the world. The first type simply means Excuse me, I didnt hear you. Could you please repeat yourself? The second type is a little trickier. It means something more along the lines of Excuse me, I did hear you, but I cant believe thats really what you meant.

But the sad truth is that the truth is sad, and what you want does not matter

Thinking about something is like picking up a stone when taking a walk, either while skipping rocks on the beach, for example, or looking for a way to shatter the glass doors of a museum. When you think about something, it adds a bit of weight to your walk, and as you think about more and more things you are liable to feel heavier and heavier, until you are so burdened you cannot take any further steps, and can only sit and stare at the gentle movements of the ocean waves or security guards, thinking too hard bout too many things to do anything else.

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.