Quotes from Lemony Snicket

This story is about the Baudelaires. And they are the sort of people who know that there's always something. Something to invent, something to read, something to bite, and something to do, to make a sanctuary, no matter how small. And for this reason, I am happy to say, the Baudelaires were very fortunate indeed.

Appearance matters a great deal because you can often tell a lot about people by looking at how they present themselves.

A bolt from the blue.

If you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable. This is a difficult trick, and most people never master it, and end up dead or uncomfortable at least once during their lives.

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.

Wicked people never have time for reading," Dewey said. "It's one of the reasons for their wickedness.

Pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity," Sunny said, which you will probably recall means something along the lines of "I must admit I don't have the faintest idea of what is going on." Sunny had now said this particular thing three times over the course of her life, and she was beginning to wonder if this was something she was only going to say more and more as she grew older.

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

There are some things we might not know, but that doesn't mean we should give up. We can find out what we need to know. We can find out everything

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.

If you know somebody very well, like your grandmother or your baby sister, you will know when they are real and when they are fake.

Perhaps I should just bury myself and become a diamond after thousands of years of intense pressure

Frustration is an interesting emotional state, because it tends to bring out the worst in whoever is frustrated. Frustrated babies tend to throw food and make a mess. Frustrated citizens tend to execute kings and queens and make a democracy. And frustrated moths tend to bang up against lightbulbs and make light fixtures all dusty.

Así pues, a menos que hayáis sido muy, muy afortunados, sabréis que una buena y larga sesión de llanto a menudo puede haceros sentir mejor, aunque vuestras circunstancias no hayan cambiado lo más mínimo.

There are two good reasons to put your napkin in your lap. One is that food might spill in your lap, and it is better to stain the napkin than your clothing. The other is that it can serve as a perfect hiding place. Practically nobody is nosey enough to take the napkin off a lap to see what is hidden there.

In any case, this is how all our stories begin, in darkness with our eyes closed, and all our stories end the same way, too, with all of us uttering some last words—or perhaps someone else's—before slipping back into darkness as our series of unfortunate events comes to an end.

Morning is one of the best times for thinking. When one has just woken up, but hasn't yet gotten out of bed, it is a perfect time to look up at the ceiling, consider one's life, and wonder what the future will hold.

Tee hee torture!

Nothing firms up a friendship like a good-natured argument.

If you don't care about something, one way to demonstrate your feelings is to say the word and then repeat the word with the letters S-C-H-M replacing the first letters. Somebody who didn't care about dentists, for instance could say 'Dentist, schmentists.

I thought maybe if I stared hard enough, I could see the lights of the city I had left so very far behind. This was nonsense, of course, but there's nothing wrong with occasionally staring out the window and thinking nonsense, as long as the nonsense is yours.

There are many things in life that become different if you take a long look at them.

It doesn't matter if you never see someone again, I told myself. There are millions of people in the world, and most of them never see each other in the first place. You hoped to know Ellington Feint forever, but there's no such thing as forever, really. Everything is much shorter than that.

You cannot wait for an untroubled world to have an untroubled moment.