Daniel Handler Quotes

153 Sourced Quotes

In this large and fierce world of ours, there are many, many unpleasant places to be. You can be in a river swarming with angry electric eels, or in a supermarket filled with vicious long-distance runners. You can be in a hotel that has no room service, or you can be lost in a forest that is slowly filling up with water. You can be in a hornet's nest or in an abandoned airport or the office of a pediatric surgeon, but one of the most unpleasant things that can happen is to find yourself in a quandary. - Lemony Snicket

Daniel Handler
Judgmentally, judgmentally, judgmentally I would believe in you and sword fight others who did not, any necessary sacrifice if you were in the mood for that.

Daniel Handler
It's hard for decent people to stay angry at someone who has burst into tears, which is why it is often a good idea to burst into tears if a decent person is yelling at you.

Daniel Handler
"Yeah, I have a question," said the guy with the wicked eyes... "My question is, I quit. I'm going to quit."

Daniel Handler
People aren't either wicked or noble, the hook-handed man said. They're like chef's salad, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.

Daniel Handler
They are all one, the mothers of us all, like the money you spent. Imagine the vanish of weight if the advice of your mother never existed. They tell us things, unless we have no mothers and either way things turn out such that nothing you've ever heard is ever any help.

Daniel Handler
"I love you, too" David said and took the bottle.
"I want you to love me in particular," Helena said

Daniel Handler
Who would dare think that, forever? Some idiot girl who wouldn't know how things played out.

Daniel Handler
"Oh my god!" Hillary is standing in the doorway of the bathroom of the bathroom which on one had is surprising but there's the other hand, too.

Daniel Handler
The whole thing of what I've been trying, you said, is that you're different, and you keep asking about the other girls, but what I mean is that I don't think about them, because of the way you are.

Daniel Handler
That night it felt that somehow by flicking them off the roof, the matches would burn down everything, the sparks from the tips of the flames, torching the world and all the heartbroken people in it.

Daniel Handler
She said, "We're detectives" in the tone of voice that someone might say, "Making you happy isn't making me happy"

Daniel Handler
For Beatrice—You will always be in my heart, in my mind, and in your grave. -Lemony Snicket

Daniel Handler
I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture.

Daniel Handler
This world is suchier than we are, and the best thing to do is keep moving and find your keys.

Daniel Handler
With the Baudelaire orphans, it was as if their grief were a very heavy object that they each took turns carrying so that they would not all be crying at once, but sometimes the object was too heavy for one of them to move without weeping, so Violet and Sunny stood next to Klaus, reminding him that this was something they could all carry together until at last they found a safe place to lay it down.

Daniel Handler
Dear Joe The letter said The windows rattle without you, you bastard. The trees are the cause, rattling in the wind, you jerk, the wild scraping those leaves and twigs against my window. They'll keep on doing this, you terrible husband, and slowly wear away our entire apartment.

Daniel Handler
A cloud of dust is not a beautiful thing to look at. Very few painters have done portraits of huge clouds of dust or included them in their landscapes or still life. Film directors rarely choose huge clouds of dust to play the lead roles in romantic comedies, and as far as my research has shown, a huge cloud of dust has never placed higher than twenty-fifth in a beauty pageant. - Lemony Snicket

Daniel Handler
Having an aura of menace is like having a pet weasel, because you rarely meet someone who has one, and when you do it makes you want to hide under the coffee table.

Daniel Handler
Let's go, let's go together toward something extraordinary and I started making plans, thinking we would get that far.

Daniel Handler
Just about everything in this world is easier said than done, with the exception of 'systematically assisting Sisyphus's stealthy, syst-susceptible sister,' which is easier done than said. - Lemony Snicket

Daniel Handler
Wedding after wedding after wedding and then yours - your wedding? Would that make you what they're now calling happy?

Daniel Handler
Put your hair up, Min. The secret ingredient is not your hair.

Daniel Handler
The world is a harum-scarum place."
"Harum?" Sunny asked.
It's complicated and confusing," Olivia explained. They say that long ago it was simple and quiet, but that might be a legend.

Daniel Handler
As the aphorism says, If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

Daniel Handler