Daniel Handler Quotes

153 Sourced Quotes

The world 'bubble' is in the dictionary, as is the word 'peacock,' the word 'vacation,' and the words 'the,' 'author's,' 'execution,' 'has,' 'been,' 'cancelled,' which make up a sentence that is always pleasant to hear. So, if you were to read the dictionary, rather than this book, you could skip the parts about 'nervous' and 'anxious' and read about things that wouldn't keep you up all night, weeping and tearing your hair out. But this book is not a dictionary, and if you were to skip the parts about 'nervous' and 'anxious' you would be skipping the most pleasant parts of the entire story. Nowhere in this book will you find the words 'bubble,' 'peacock,' 'vacation,' or, unfortunately for me, anything about an execution being cancelled.

Daniel Handler
Allison squinted at the strange, catastrophic sky, and took another step, another step, another step, because in the future - she could see it - this would not be happening.

Daniel Handler
What he'd just said was "Who cares?" and nobody wants to hear that.

Daniel Handler
A girl meets a boy, Ed, and everything changes, or so she says.

Daniel Handler
My stepfather said that the amount of treachery in this world is enormous, and that the best we could do was one small noble thing.

Daniel Handler
Klaus: Maybe I don't know what "cakesniffer" means, but I think I can translate our new school's motto... If I'm not mistaken, "Memento Mori" means "Remember you will die".

Daniel Handler
If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven't, you cannot possibly imagine it.

Daniel Handler
You know I want to be a director, but you could never truly see the movies in my head and that, Ed, is why we broke up.

Daniel Handler
Why not rise from the grave and terrorize a little instead of staying buried and dead in the cemetery?

Daniel Handler
I hope, for your sake, that you have not chosen to read this book because you are in the mood for a pleasant experience. If this is the case, I advise you to put this book down instantaneously, because of all the books describing the unhappy lives of the Baudelaire orphans, The Miserable Mill might be the unhappiest yet. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are sent to Paltryville to work in a lumber mill, and they find disaster and misfortune lurking behind every log.

Daniel Handler
I have promised to write down the entire history of these three poor children, but you haven't, so if you prefer stories that are more heartwarming, please feel free to make another selection.

Daniel Handler
They could not love anymore, they thought, just drink and pour coffee and track people down in the rain. They were living frigidly, as if in a cone of frost.

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
I'm happier than a pig eating bacon!" Count Olaf cried. "I'm tickled pinker than a sun-burned Caucasian! I'm in higher spirits than a brand-new graveyard! I'm so happy-go-lucky that lucky and happy people are going to beat me with sticks out of pure, unbridled jealousy!

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
I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table.

Daniel Handler
Keith has one of those all terrain things that will come in so handy when the world ends and we need a nine-thousand -cylinder engine to drive over those hordes of blood-thirsty mutants crawling all over the video-game landscape.

Daniel Handler
To tell you the truth, I sometimes find it a bit tiresome, Fiona said....

Daniel Handler
As the hook-handed man circled the brig, it was as if the Baudelaires were picking through a chef's salad consisting mostly of dreadful- and perhaps even poisonous- ingredients, trying desperately to find the one noble crouton that might save their sister....

Daniel Handler
I'm not - the terrific guy you keep telling me about. I'm not made of sugar and spice and everything nice. I'm made of rats and snails and puppy-dogs tails. I lie sometimes. I have broken people's hearts. I'm looking for love, I'll admit that, but now that it's here in abundance, I'm afraid of commitment and I want you, please, to leave me.

Daniel Handler
The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up. Like a tie at a tag sale, some perfect thing in a crate of nothing, you were just there, uninvited, and now suddenly the party was over and you were all I wanted. I hadn't even been looking, not for you, and now you were my heart's desire.

Daniel Handler
-Most people would say that she's beautiful. -That's because she's been with most people.

Daniel Handler
Lemony Snicket: (narrating) Reading poetry, even if you are only reading to find a secret message within its words, can often give one a feeling of power, the way you can feel powerful if you are the only one who brought an umbrella on a rainy day, or the only one who knows how to untie knots when you're taken hostage.

Daniel Handler
"I know" Helena said and this is another example of why behave this way? Things just poured out of her mouth lately, like vomit, and sometimes it actually was.

Daniel Handler
I'd ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you, and I did.

Daniel Handler
Everything else has vanished, so you take them now. Maybe if you're the one keeping them, I'll be the one feeling better.

Daniel Handler
Everyone on earth would never starve and forever find love and happiness, since we won, but if we'd lost, they would have gouged out our eyes and thrown us naked onto hot coals and poisonous snakes for all the cheering and hugging at the end, strangers hugging like the end of The Omega Virus when Steve Sturmine finds the antidote.

Daniel Handler
Friday: Baudelaires, please come with me.
Olaf: What about me?
Friday: Go away.

Daniel Handler
[she] gave me a puzzled frown like she thought offhand i was dead but the media's so unreliable these days.

Daniel Handler
If you are like most people, you have an assortment of friends and family you can call upon in times of trouble. For instance, if you woke up in the middle of the night and saw a masked woman trying to crawl through your bedroom window, you might call your mother or father to help you push her back out. If you found yourself hopelessly lost in the middle of a strange city, you might ask the police to give you a ride home. And if you were an author locked in an Italian restaurant that was slowly filling up with water, you might call upon your acquaintances in the locksmith, pasta, and sponge businesses to come and rescue you.

Daniel Handler