Daniel Handler Quotes

153 Sourced Quotes

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
If i were a little braver i would have asked her something like, "Do you think Kickass: the movie is a comedy in the traditional, classical sense?" and we could have that conversation and it would lead to other conversations during the flat and lonely times.

Daniel Handler
Love can smack you like a seagull, and pour all over your feet like junkmail. You can't be ready for such a thing any more than salt water taffy gets you ready for the ocean.

Daniel Handler
Unfortunately, I have dedicated my life to researching and recording the sad tale of the Baudelaire Orphans. There is no reason for you to dedicate yourself to such things, and you might instead dedicate yourself to letting this slippery book slip from your hands into a nearby trash receptacle, or deep pit.

Daniel Handler
To stutter through it with you or even stop stuttering and say nothing, was so lucky and soft, better talk than mile-a-minute with anyone. After a few minutes we'd stop rattling, we'd adjust, we'd settle in, and the conversation would speed into the night.

Daniel Handler
Undeveloped, the whole thing, tossed into a box before we really had a chance to know what we had, and that's why we broke up.

Daniel Handler
On the day you officially join the organization, you will hear a noise outside your home. It may sound like the howl of a wolf, the chirping of a cricket, the engine of an automobile, the keys of a typewriter, the striking of a match, or the turning of a page. The noise will come in the middle of the night, the middle of the morning, or, in very rare cases, late in the afternoon. Ask your parents what the noise was. If they reply 'nothing,' they are replying in code, because there is never 'nothing' outside one's home. If you are interested in volunteering, answer your parents with the following question: 'If there's nothing out there, what was that noise?' We will be listening, and will know it is safe to act. — V. F. D.

Daniel Handler
I liked, I admit, that we didn't pretend there hadn't been other girls. There was always a girl on you in the halls at school, like they came free with a backpack.

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
Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes, follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women.

Daniel Handler
Here we are at the bottom, almost empty. It's like confetti, these dried remnants you find in the street for a party no one invited you to. But they used to be, I can admit, part of something beautiful.

Daniel Handler
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. Ishmael outwitted me, and put me in this cage. But I know how to outwit him and all his islander friends. If you let me out, I can be king of Olaf-Land, and you three can be my new henchfolk.
Klaus: We don't want to be your henchfolk, we just want to be safe. Olaf: Nowhere in the world is safe.

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

Daniel Handler
To Beatrice—My love flew like a butterfly, Until death swooped down like a bat, As the poet Emma Montana McElroy said: That's the end of that.

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
The right boys I always toss and the wrong ones I keep on top of me like paperweights.

Daniel Handler
Why, you're all grown up! The last time I saw you I was trying to throw thumbtacks into your cradle!

Daniel Handler
The world gets grimy and the love object is in stark relief from its surroundings. This is love, a pretty thing on an ugly street and why wouldn't you pick it up if it appeared in a taxi cab.

Daniel Handler
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
"Instead of change, please give me gun so i can shoot you." She is soft-spoken but short and full of rage lately, like her whole life.

Daniel Handler
Wherever it's good, whatever strange, faraway land, let's go there, let's stay in that place alone.

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
You'd think that sweet would be a land far, far away from irritating, but as it turns out they're right next door, and always having border disputes.

Daniel Handler
I opened my mouth and kissed you then, the first time all night, attacked you and surrendered completely, and let's get out of here. I'm ready, I'm finished, let's not break up, no, no. Take me home, my boyfriend, my love.

Daniel Handler
There is evil out there you cannot even imagine. -Captain Widdershins

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

Daniel Handler
He's been misled and he's been afraid. He's been hit in the head and left for dead. He's been abused and he's been accused and he's been refused a piece of bread. On and on he goes down this road getting pushed around and lost and around and given until sundown to get out of town, and yet this is basically a love song. He's had the shit kicked out of him, and guess what? It's love.

Daniel Handler
Miracles are like meatballs because nobody knows what they are made of, where they came from or how often they should appear.

Daniel Handler
There are few sights sadder than a ruined book. -Lemony Snicket

Daniel Handler
Standing ten feet away from Lila was sort of kickass with her nails drumming on the box with the slot in, where we put everything that we rip in half, and with her blue-eyed beauty and with the gum she was chewing and how lovely she was, in that way that makes you want to find something else lovely just so you can give it to her and see how really kickass it is to have to lovely things next to each other.

Daniel Handler