Quotes from Daniel Handler

They say that when you're really in love, the world becomes gossamer and gorgeous, but in my experience the world gets grimy, and the love object is in stark relief from the surroundings. This is love, a pretty thing on an ugly street.

To stutter through it with you or even stop stuttering and say nothing, was so lucky and soft, better talk than mile-a-minute with anyone. After a few minutes we'd stop rattling, we'd adjust, we'd settle in, and the conversation would speed into the night.

But just suddenly I really, really needed to see you again right that minute, that night.

You were all I wanted, the best gift. I hadn't even been looking, not for you, and now you were my heart's desire.

when I think about sex, you know, I want it to feel good. Not feel good, shut up, but right. Happy, not just banging away somewhere. You know, you should not just do it to do it. You should love the guy.

Put your hair up, Min. The secret ingredient is not your hair.

There were a million things, everything, I didn't know I was stupid- the official descriptive phrase for happy.

I'd ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you. And I did. But that right there was why it was doomed.

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.

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

I can see it, Ed, I leaned deeper into you, felt you nodding along with the sounds in the room, and your warmth signaled through to me from under your shirt, lovely strong, safe and right.

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

I'm writing it in a letter, the whole truth of why it happened. And the truth is that I goddamn loved you so much.

I want what can't possibly happen, and that is why we broke up.

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.

You know I want to be a director, but you could never truly see the movies in my head and that, Ed, is why we broke up.

A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? it boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and fuck you. Even now.

I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and fuck you. Even now.

Maybe, generations ago, young people rebelled out of some clear motive, but now, we know we're rebelling. Between teen movies and sex-ed textbooks we're so ready for our rebellious phase we can't help but feel it's safe, contained. It will turn out all right, despite the risk, snug in the shell of rebellion narrative. Rebellion narrative, does that make sense? It was appropriate to do, so we did it.

Chestnuts in stuffing tastes like someone chewed up a tree branch and then French-kissed it into your mouth.

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.

How confusing. Could it be that our narrator is unreliable? No such chance. Mind like a steel trap, I have.

Is it OK not to be a virgin, yes. Most people aren't virgins, Min. That's why there's people to begin with.