Quotes from Lemony Snicket

Was it really necessary? Was it absolutely necessary to steal that sugar bowl from Esmé Squalor?

My family had taught me to eat everything on my plate, especially at a restaurant, where food is more expensive . . . But the shoemaker had a different way of thinking. She thought that if you were providing someone with dinner, the only way to tell if they were satisfied was if there was food left on their plate, because it meant you knew for sure they were no longer hungry.

Nobody´s going to throw you overboard," Violet said impatiently, although I´m sorry to tell you that Violet was wrong about that.

It was a familiar feeling, to be hurrying someplace without really knowing what is going on. When I was a child, this happened all the time, because when you are a child, nothing is your business, and you are constantly being yanked one place or another with no satisfying explanation provided by the adults doing the yanking, and so you soon get used to being in a constant state of bewilderment.

cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and as he talked to the children he looked at them through the rearview mirror.

Slavery was more or less brought to an end in America, although not as quickly or apologetically as it should have been, and even after slavery ended, the descendants of slaves have been treated very terribly by many people in places with much hatred and violence, which, like slavery, may someday come to an end, although not as quickly or apologetically as any decent person would like.

My sister is a nice girl," Klaus said, "and she knows how to do all sorts of things.

The Europeans are sometimes described as "discovering America," which is confusing, because of course there were already people living there, so it would be as if I walked into your house and said I discovered it, simply because I hadn't been there before. In history, such visitors are often referred to as "pioneers," but in this situation you would probably be more likely to call me a burglar.

I liked this bread.

Water and I have always gotten along. I was not a child who complained about having to take a bath or a shower, because I enjoyed being alone somewhere where people could not interrupt me, or if they did, I could pretend not to hear them over the water running.

Besides getting several paper cuts in the same day or receiving the news that someone in your family has betrayed you to your enemies, one of the most unpleasant experiences in life is a job interview. It is very nerve-wracking to explain to someone all the things you can do in the hopes that they will pay you to do them.

the wicked choice, the wrong thing you may have done, is easier to find than comfort and forgiveness, that it takes more effort to be a good person than a bad one, which might be why one sees wickedness in abundance, just sitting and waiting, while goodness is often so elusive, a word which refers to things that keep slipping away.

really, really"—horrendous

All of the most important questions in life are dismissed most of the time by most of the people, and it is true that much of the world prefers to do something more practical . . . But something happens when you think about these enormous questions. As you imagine, for instance, a chicken emerging from an egg which has emerged from a chicken which has emerged from an egg, your mind wanders as if on a voyage, and as with any voyage, you are likely to discover something along the way.

For Beatrice - When we met, my life began. Soon after, yours ended.

Es mucho, mucho peor recibir las malas noticias por escrito que alguien te las diga, y estoy seguro de que comprendéis por qué. Cuando alguien simplemente te da malas noticias, las oyes una vez y ya está. Pero cuando las malas noticias están escritas, ya sea en una carta, un periódico o en tu brazo con rotulador, cada vez que las lees es como si recibieses las mismas noticias una y otra vez.

think we'll always miss our parents. But I think we can miss them without being miserable all the time. After all, they wouldn't want us to be miserable.

There were books on all sorts of topics, from exciting things of vital importance to things that nobody had a reason to care about, but in a library the topics keep taking turns being important or interesting. Each patron in a library is looking for something different, and so the book you hardly notice is the book someone else is breathless to find, and the book that always makes you smile is busy making someone else sick.

Siete pronte? » domandò alla fine Klaus. « No » rispose Sunny. « Neanch'io » disse Violet, « ma se aspettiamo di essere pronti aspetteremo tutta la vita. Andiamo ».

Almost always, shortening a sentence improves it. A nice short sentence feels like something has been left out, which helps give it the element of surprise.

if you are a student you should always get a good night's sleep unless you have come to the good part of your book, and then you should stay up all night and let your schoolwork fall by the wayside, a phrase which means "flunk.

There were no books in the room as far as I could see. I should have known better.

Each meal you eat is poison, because the food is just moving you through the world and the end of your time in it. Dinner is poison, and lunch. Brunch and eleveneses and both afternoon and bedtime snacks are poison, and so is breakfast the next morning, all these meals bringing us closer and closer to death.

except instead of the word "love" there was an enormous heart, a symbol sometimes used by people who have trouble figuring out the difference between words and shapes.