Top 573 Quotes & Sayings by Daniel Handler - Page 7

Labor Day is a holiday honoring those who work for a living. Laborious Day is a lesser known holiday honoring those who cannot stop talking about their work.

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.

You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down.

I love no one but you, I have discovered, but you are far away and I am here alone.

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

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

Stop saying no offense,” I said, “when you say offensive things. It’s not a free pass.

But it's far too late for us; ring, hair, letters, photographs - all traces of our love will be scattered then, like an anagram.

Young writers should read books past bedtime and write things down in notebooks when they are supposed to be doing something else.

One's home is like a delicious piece of pie you order in a restaurant on a country road one cozy evening - the best piece of pie you have ever eaten in your life - and can never find again. After you leave home, you may find yourself feeling homesick, even if you have a new home that has nicer wallpaper and a more efficient dishwasher than the home in which you grew up.

Boredom is not black licorice, Snicket," she said. "There's no reason to share it with me.

But we can also ask for something we are much more likely to get, and that is to find a person or two, somewhere in our travels, who will tell us that we are noble enough, whether it is true or not. We can ask for someone who will say, “You are noble enough,” and remind us of our good qualities when we have forgotten them, or cast them into doubt.

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

This feeling is not unlike the sinking in one's stomach when one is in an elevator that suddenly goes down, or when you are snug in your bed and your closet door suddenly creaks open to reveal the person who has been hiding there.

I love no one but you, I have discovered, but you are far away and I am here alone. Then this is my life and maybe, however unlikely, I'll find my way back there. Or maybe, one day, I'll settle for second best. And on that same day, hell will freeze over, the sun will burn out and the stars will fall from the sky.

With a library it is easier to hope for serendipity than to look for a precise answer.

It seemed to me that every adult did something terrible sooner or later. And every child, I thought, sooner or later becomes an adult.

There are some secrets you want to keep to yourself, even if they don't matter. They might only matter if you keep them secret.

The Long Goodbye' is one book I like to read over and over again, and it was an enormous inspiration for 'All The Wrong Questions'.

and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.

Grammar is the greatest joy in life, don't you find?

So she loved him. She just did immediately and again often and clearly naturally and soundly and obviously and many others.

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

It was a secret time and place, you next to me, untraceable and out of this world

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

Money is like a child—rarely unaccompanied. When it disappears, look to those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it while you were at the grocery store. You might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around, with long, suspicious explanations for how they got there.

You meet people who are in pain in life and love and you forgive them for behaving the way they do.

In the time since the Baudelaire parents' death, most of the Baudelaire orphans' friends had fallen by the wayside, an expression wich here means "they stopped calling, writing, and stopping by to see any of the Baudelaires, making them lonely". You and I, of course, would never do this to any of our grieving acquaintances, but it is a sad truth that when someone has lost a loved one, friends sometimes avoid the person, just when the presence of friends is most needed.

And when love is over when the diner of love seems closed from the outside you want all those hours back along with anything you left at the lover’s house and maybe a couple of things which aren’t technically yours on the grounds that you wasted a portion of your life and those hours have all gone southside.

This is love if it's not with you, a terrible fiery something that makes people look away, and it feels like a punch in the throat.

Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is, because you know people who have similar experiences.

Once more, this is love: it rings and you open up unless it looks like an ax murderer.

You should never stick something that you are allergic to into your mouth, especially if that thing is cats.

Nobody wants to fall into a safety net, because it means the structure in which they've been living is in a state of collapse and they have no choice but to tumble downwards. However, it beats the alternative.

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.

For Beatrice, our love broke my heart, and stopped yours.

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.

An apocryphal story - the word "apocryphal" here means "obviously untrue" - tells of two people, long ago, who were very bored, and that instead of complaining about it they sat up all night and invented the game of chess so that everyone else in the world, on evenings when there is nothing to do, can also be bored by the perplexing and tedious game they invented.

People who say money doesn’t matter are like people who say cake doesn’t matter—it’s probably because they’ve already had a few slices.

Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact.

Are you ready?" Klaus asked finally. "No," Sunny answered. "Me neither," Violet said, "but if we wait until we're ready we'll be waiting for the rest of our lives, Let's go.

There are two types of panicking: standing still and not saying a word, and leaping all over the place babbling anything that comes into your head.

The expression "following suit" is a curious one, because it has nothing to do with walking behind a matching set of clothing. If you follow suit, it means you do the same thing somebody else has just done. If all of your friends decided to jump off a bridge into the icy waters of an ocean or river, for instance, and you jumped in right after them, you would be following suit. You can see why following suit can be a dangerous thing to do, because you could end up drowning simply because somebody else thought of it first.

Love is candy from a stranger, but it's candy you've had before and it probably won't kill you.

She gave me a hug and for a second I was embraced by a body that makes me want to go home and never eat again.

'Help me,' Allison says, but she is soft-spoken, and everyone she loves is so far away.

I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but first impressions are often entirely wrong. You can look at a painting for the first time, for example, and not like it at all, but after looking at it a little longer you may find it very pleasing. The first time you try Gorgonzola cheese you may find it too strong, but when you are older you may want to eat nothing but Gorgonzola cheese. Klaus, when Sunny was born, did not like her at all, but by the time she was six weeks old the two of them were thick as thieves. Your initial opinion on just about anything may change over time.

We need things, and the opposite of them, and we are so rarely completely comfortable.

I want to love you and take you pretty places. Yes, I have things wrong, but also I can walk through walls if you'll let me show you.

I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see.

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.

For Beatrice, when we met, my life began. Soon afterwards, yours ended.

It's different," you said. "You've made, Min, everything different for me. Everything's like coffee you made me try, better than I ever - or the places I didn't even know were right on the street, you know? I'm like this thing I saw when I was little, where a kid hears a noise under his bed and there's a ladder there that's never been there before, and he climbs down and, it's for kids I know, but this song starts playing..." Your eyes were traveling in the treey light.

Why haven't we fixed sick yet? You scientists there-- put down those starfish and HELP us. I hereby demand that all the people who are good at math make the world free of illness. The rest of us will write you epic poems and staple them together into a booklet.

We laughed the rest of the way, because the point of this story is, it is not the cookies. It is the love.

Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don’t tell them they aren’t. Sit with them and have a drink.

Who are you?" Violet asked. It is confusing to fall asleep in the daytime and wake up at night. "what are you doing with Uncle Monty's reptiles?" Klaus asked. It is also confusing to realize you have been sleeping on stairs, rather than in a bed or sleeping bag. "Dixnik?" Sunny asked. It is always confusing why anyone would choose to wear a plaid shirt.

It is much, much worse to receive bad news through the written word than by somebody simply telling you, and I’m sure you understand why. When somebody simply tells you bad news, you hear it once, and that’s the end of it. But when bad news is written down, whether in a letter or a newspaper or on your arm in felt tip pen, each time you read it, you feel as if you are receiving the bad news again and again.

Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter.

It is always tedious when someone tells you that if you don't stop crying, they will give you something to cry about, because if you are crying then you already have something to cry about, and so there is no reason for them to give you anything additional to cry about, thank you very much.