Lemony Snicket Quotes

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.”

“Wicked people never have time for reading. It’s one of the reasons for their wickedness.”

“Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another.”

“Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night’s sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too.”

“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and re-adjust the way you thought of things.”

“I suppose I’ll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies.”

“People aren’t either wicked or noble. They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”

“Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.”

“If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf.”

“A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.”

“If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.”

“All nights are dark days, because night is simply a badly lit version of day.”

“It is always sad when someone leaves home, unless they are simply going around the corner and will return in a few minutes with ice cream sandwiches.”

“Anyone who thinks the pen is mightier than the sword has not been stabbed with both.”

“Do the scary thing first, and get scared later.”

“Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean that it’s nonsense.”

“When things don’t go right, go left.”

“In my experience, Well-read people are less likely to be evil.”

“Don’t repeat yourself. It’s not only repetitive, it’s redundant, and people have heard it before.”

“All cannot be lost when there is still so much being found.”

“Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make — bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake — if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble.”

“If everyone fought fire with fire, the whole world would go up in smoke.”

“Siblings that say they never fight are most definitely hiding something.”

“There’s nothing wrong with occasionally staring out the window and thinking nonsense, as long as the nonsense is yours.

“Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you’d see.”

“When trouble strikes, head to the library. You will either be able to solve the problem, or simply have something to read as the world crashes down around you.”

“Sometimes the things you’ve lost can be found again in unexpected places.”

“Oftentimes. when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.”

“Tears are curious things, for like earthquakes or puppet shows, they can occur at any time, without any warning and without any good reason.”

“It is one of life’s bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting.

“One should never ignore bullies. One should stop them.”

“Anyone who gives you a cinnamon roll fresh out of the oven is a friend for life.”

“What happens in a certain place can stain your feelings for that location, just as ink can stain a white sheet. You can wash it, and wash it, and still never forget what has transpired - a word which here means ‘happened, and made everybody sad’.”

“It is one of the peculiar truths of life that people often say things that they know full well are ridiculous.”

“I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.”

“I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess.”

“I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms.”

“I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation.”

“I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.”

“But I must admit I miss you terribly. The world is too quiet without you nearby.”

“I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area.”

“I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written.”

“I will love you until every fire is extinguished and rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close... I will love you until your face is fogged by distant memory.”

“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. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. ”

“I go to bed early and rise late and feel as if I have hardly slept, probably because I have been reading almost the entire time.”

″ I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp... I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and all the secrets have gone gasping into the world.”

“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.”

″ I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.”

“I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled.”

“Life never end when you are in it.”

“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.”

“I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.”

“Grinning is something you do when you are entertained in some way, such as reading a good book or watching someone you don’t care for spill orange soda all over himself.”

“It was a curious feeling, that something could be so close and so distant at the same time.”

“I myself fell in love with a wonderful women who was so charming and intelligent that I trusted that she would be my bride, but there was no way of knowing for sure, and all too soon circumstances changed and she ended up marrying someone else, all because of something she read in The Daily Punctilio.”

“Who will take care of us out there?” Klaus said, looking out on the flat horizon. “Nobody,” Violet said. “We’ll have to take care of ourselves. We’ll have to be self-sustaining.” “Like the hot air mobile home,” Klaus said, “that could travel and survive all by itself.” “Like me,” Sunny said, and abruptly stood up. Violet and Klaus gasped in surprise as their baby sister took her first wobbly steps, and then walked closely beside her, ready to catch her if she fell. But she didn’t fall. Sunny took a few more self-sustaining steps, and then the three Baudelaires stood together, casting long shadows across the horizon in the dying light of the sunset.”

“It is true, of course, that there is no way of knowing for sure whether or not you can trust someone, for the simple reason that circumstances change all of the time. You might know someone for several years, for instance, and trust him completely as your friend, but circumstances could change and he could become very hungry, and before you knew it you could be boiling in a soup pot, because there is no way of knowing for sure.”

“If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you.”

“Grinning is something you do when you are entertained in some way, such as reading a good book or watching someone you don’t care for spill orange soda all over himself.”

“Depressed” is a word that often describes somebody who is feeling sad and gloomy, but in this case it describes a secret button, hidden in a crow statue, that is feeling just fine, thank you.”

“If you are baking a pie for your friends, and you read an article entitled ‘How to Build a Chair’ instead of a cookbook, you pie will probably end up tasting like wood and nails instead of like crust and fruity filling.”

“And as the Baudelaires told Hector their long story, they began to feel as if the handyman was carrying more than their suitcases. They felt as if he was carrying each word they said, as if each unfortunate event was a burden that Hector was helping them with. The story of their lives was so miserable that I cannot say they felt happy when they were through telling it, but by the time Sunny concluded the whole long story, the Baudelaires felt as if they were carrying much less.”