Daniel Handler Quotes

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

The pages of this book, I'm sorry to inform you, contain such unpleasantries as a giant pincer machine, a bad casserole, a man with a cloud of smoke where his head should be, a hypnotist, a terrible accident resulting in injury, and coupons.

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'll have ten grams of rice, Mrs. Bass interrupted, one tenth of a hectogram of shrimp vindaloo, a dekagram of chana aloo masala, one thousand centigrams of tandori salmon, four samosas with surface area of nineteen cubic centimeters, five deciliters of mango lassi, and a sada rava dosai that's exactly nineteen centimeters long.

There is nothing particularly wrong with salmon, of course, but like caramel candy, strawberry yogurt, or liquid carpet cleaner, if you eat too much of it you are not going to enjoy your meal.

All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk.

With all due respect,

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 themselves.

This was that day if you know what I mean.

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

"Just about everything in this world is easier said than done, with the exception of "systematically assisting Sisyphus's stealthy, cyst-susceptible sister," which is easier done than said."

It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are really right and the person who is really wrong is proving you wrong and proving himself, wrongly, right.

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

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.

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.