Daniel Handler Quotations | Page 6

Composer” is a word which here means “a person who sits in a room, muttering and humming and figuring out what notes the orchestra is going to play.” This is called composing. But last night, the Composer was not muttering. He was not humming. He was not moving, or even breathing. This is called decomposing.

They looked at each other like a pair of parentheses.

Siblings that say they never fight are most definitely hiding something

If you enjoy books with happy endings than you are better off reading some other book.

I write storys to entertain not to be the best

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

It is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes; it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.

A long time ago, there was no such thing as school, and children spent their days learning a trade, a phrase which here means "standing around doing tedious tasks under the instruction of a bossy adult." In time, however, people realized that the children could be allowed to sit, and the first school was invented.

There are some people who believe that home is where one hangs one's hat, but these people tend to live in closets and on little pegs.

Sometimes words are not enough.

The movie was kickass, which was appropriate, because tonight it was called Kickass: The Movie.

I'm not a believer in predetermined fates, being rewarded for one's efforts. I'm not a believer in karma. The reason why I try to be a good person is because I think it's the right thing to do. If I commit fewer bad acts there will be fewer bad acts, maybe other people will join in committing fewer bad acts, and in time there will be fewer and fewer of them.

Dead women tell no tales. Sad men write them down.

There are few sights sadder than a ruined book.

Fetching objects for people who are too lazy to fetch them for themselves is never a pleasant task, particularly when the people are insulting you.

For Beatrice--My love for you shall live forever. You, however, did not.

It has been said that the hardest job in the world is raising a child, but the people who says this have probably never worked at a comb factory or captured pirates on the high seas.

Like People, animals will become frightened and likely do whatever you say if you whip them enough.

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

There are those who say that life is like a book, with chapters for each event in your life and a limited number of pages on which you can spend your time. But I prefer to think that a book is like a life, particularly a good one, which is well to worth staying up all night to finish.

One of the most difficult things to think about in life is one’s regrets. Something will happen to you, and you will do the wrong thing, and for years afterward you will wish you had done something different.

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.

In times of extreme stress, one can often find energy hidden in even the most exhausted areas of the body.

Every problem has a solution. Sometimes it just takes a long time to find the solution -- even if it's right in front of your nose.

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

Members of your family might say they are working hard all day long, while you are off at school or clarinet lessons, but the only way to know this for sure is to follow them at a discreet distance.

It is not very polite to interrupt a person, of course, but sometimes if the person is very unpleasant you can hardly stop yourself.

I’m happier than a pig eating bacon!

Or why you are wearing a picture of Santa Clause on you shirts, but-” “It’s Herman Melville.

The last time I saw you, I was trying to throw thumbtacks into your cradle!

Shyness is a curious thing, because, like quicksand, it can strike people at any time, and also, like quicksand, it usually makes its victims look down.

The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world.

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

No reality has the power to dispel a dream.

When you need a haircut, it looks like you have no one to take care of you.

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

We are all told to ignore bullies. It's something they teach you, and they can teach you anything. It doesn't mean you learn it. It doesn't mean you believe it. One should never ignore bullies. One should stop them.

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

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

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.

Sometimes words are not enough. There are some circumstances so utterly wretched that I cannot describe them in sentences or paragraphs or even a whole series of books.

It looked exhausting and pointless, two things that should be avoided at all costs

I do what I do," I said, "in order to do something else.

If you have ever had a miserable experience, then you have probably had it said to you that you would feel better in the morning. This, of course, is utter nonsense, because a miserable experience remains a miserable experience even on the loveliest of morning.

We weren't friends[...]We were more like jigsaw pieces, each of us part of the same big picture. There are people like this wherever you go. They are part of the same mystery as you are, but you can't quite tell how you fit together. The world is a puzzle, and we can't solve it alone.

Complimenting someone in an exaggerated way is known as flattery, and flattery will generally get you anything you want...

[I]t was the color of someone buying you an ice cream cone for no reason at all.

One of the remarkable things about love is that, despite very irritating people writing poems and songs about how pleasant it is, it really is quite pleasant.

It is so rare in this world to meet a trustworthy person who truly wants to help you, and finding such a person can make you feel warm and safe, even if you are in the middle of a windy valley high up in the mountains.

Bad circumstances have a way of ruining things that would otherwise be pleasant.

There are many difficult things in this world to hide, but a secret is not one of them.

Announcing your death should be like announcing that you are a lunar moth: It must be done quietly or it will not be believed.

Sometimes even in most unfortunate of lives there will occur a moment or two of good.

Death is something you cannot escape, such as death, or a cheesecake that has curdled, both of which always turn up sooner later.

Temper tantrums, however fun they may be to throw, rarely solve whatever problem is causing them.

I have gone into town to buy a few last things we need for the expedition: Peruvian wasp repellent, toothbrushes, canned peaches, and a fireproof canoe. It will take a while to find the peaches, so don't expect me back until dinnertime. Stephano, Gustav's replacement, will arrive today by taxi. Please make him feel welcome. As you know, it is only two days until the expedition, so please work very hard today. Your giddy uncle, Monty

The expression 'Those who can't do, teach' is a curious one, because if you look at the world , you'll see that teachers aren't particularly worse at doing things than anyone else, so perhaps the expression might be better worded as 'nobody can do anything

I don't know why wicked places generally look wicked. You'd think they'd look nice, to fool people, but they hardly ever do.

I'm not a stranger," I said, and pointed to his book. "I'm someone who reads the same authors you do.

You might be afraid of the dark, but the dark is not afraid of you. That’s why the dark is always close by.

Book thirteen marks the return of a reptile previously gone missing.

People can expect poisonous mushrooms, ... And then only if they open the book.

The way Sunny speaks in the books seems a perfect fit for the cause in question. She often uses words that can't be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, which then are explained as sly commentary on what's going on around her,

I like to give people novels I think they would like, on no particular occasion - just when we're in a bookstore together. I like to receive reference books on my birthday.

A nice thing about children's books, though I'm probably alone in this opinion among people who write and publish them, is that they did get to be in this unrecognized ghetto for a long time.

And she has a fairly consistent political agenda. She's a baby, so individual liberty is a developing idea in her psyche.

It's full of depressing details about the children's lives, ... and, I'm sorry to say, it's the longest in the series. So in terms of total misery, it's quite a lot to deal with well, both in terms of the number of pages and the amount of misery per page.