A Quote by Daniel Handler

I’m reminded of a book my father used to read me,” she said. “A bunch of elves and things get into a huge war over a piece of jewelry that everybody wants but nobody can wear.
My mother is a huge fan of my work. I told her about 'Coraline' long before the film was made, and she got the book and read it. She reminded me that when I was about five years old, I used to sit in the kitchen for hours and talk about my 'other' family in Africa, my other mother and father. I had totally forgotten that.
I heard about the book and I said, 'Oh my god, I've got to read this book,' and I didn't know that a white woman wrote it. Nobody said that to me, they just said, 'The Help - Oh my god, you've got to read it.' Everyone failed to mention it was a white woman, I think, because nobody really wants to talk about race.
Once, an unkempt, elderly woman came into the pawn shop. She appeared homeless, and she insisted on seeing every piece of expensive jewelry in the store. Just when I was feeling impatient, the woman pointed at the most expensive piece of jewelry and said, 'I'll take that one.' Then she proceeded to pull $4,000 out of her sock to pay for it.
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.
Siobhan said that when you are writing a book you have to include some descriptions of things. I said that I could take photographs and put them in the book. But she said the idea of a book was to describe things using words so that people could read them and make a picture in their own head.
I grew up around so many beautiful things. My mother's jewelry and purses - they're very much statement pieces. Again, that sort of over-the-top Russian thing where it looks like treasure. I always say to my husband, you don't ever have to get me another piece of jewelry. When your mother is this amazing woman, a North Star, sometimes you want a simpler presentation of yourself.
When you're me, when you're R. Kelly, everybody wants a piece of you, and if you don't give 'em a piece they'll find a way to get a piece of you one way or the other.
There's this creative thing in me that wants to have my work used - like the author of a book who wants it read.
I always ask the booksellers to look at me and recommend a book; 9 out of 10, they get it right; it’s usually a book about someone dysfunctional. To me bookstores are like brothels of imagination, each book is luring me over going, 'Read me, read me'.
I'm a jewelry girl. I became with friends with designer Irene Neuwirth a few years ago. At that point, I just used to wear my wedding rings. Very low key. Now, if I could, I'd be draped from head to toe in her jewelry all the time. Everything she makes is beautiful.
I've been training fighters about 10 years. And I know I get the kids that nobody else is gonna want. I get kids who violated probation five, six, seven times. Their parents don't want 'em, the police don't want 'em - nobody wants 'em. And so I say, okay, I was like that. Nobody wanted me. Once I found out that a nobody could do what I did, I took a whole bunch of nobodies. When you take a nobody, they're open to anything, so that's what I started working with. I started working with the worst kids that nobody else wants to deal with.
My mum used to wear the guys' Chesty Bonds tanks, and I used to end up wearing them after she'd finish with them. She's a painter, and they would be covered in paint splatters. She would wear them and wear them until they were super-soft, and then I'd get them. But I was just a kid, so they were like a dress on me.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
She told me that every other step was just for me.' But that's only half of the dance,' I said. Yeah,' my father said. 'She was keeping the rest for herself. Nobody can give everything away. It ain't healthy.
I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic ... something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
I always credited my mother with inspiring me to be a writer because she was such a passionate reader. She read poetry to me as a child. But rather late in life, I've come to appreciate my father, the accountant. He was a solid, organized, get-the-job-done kind of person-and you need that piece of it to be a writer, too.
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