Quotes from Lemony Snicket

It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.

Whenever you are examining someone else's belongings, you are bound to learn many interesting things about the person of which you were not previously aware.

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

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

Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact.

Xenial' is a word which refers to the giving of gifts to strangers. . . . I know that having a good vocabulary doesn't guarantee that I'm a good person. . . . But it does mean I've read a great deal. And in my experience, well-read people are less likely to be evil.

Your initial opinion on just about anything may change over time.

It is always tedious when someone tells you that if you don't stop crying, they will give you something to cry about, because if you are crying then you already have something to cry about, and so there is no reason for them to give you anything additional to cry about, thank you very much.

A successful villain should have all these things at his or her villainous fingertips, or else give up villainy altogether and try to lead a life of decency, integrity, and kindness, which is much more challenging and noble, if not always quite as exciting.

The thing you hope will never happen to you might just happen to someone else instead, who has been spending their life dreading the thing that will happen to you.

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.

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

There are almost as many kinds of libraries as there are kinds of readers.

And a refrigerator may hold a basket of strawberries, which would be important if a maniac said to you, "If you don't give me a basket of strawberries right now, I'm going to poke you with this large stick." But when the two elder Baudelaires and Quigley Quagmire opened the refrigerator, they found nothing that would help someone who was wounded, dying of thirst, or being threatened by a strawberry-crazed, stick-carrying maniac.

It is much, much worse to receive bad news through the written word than by somebody simply telling you, and I'm sure you understand why. When somebody simply tells you bad news, you hear it once, and that's the end of it. But when bad news is written down, whether in a letter or a newspaper or on your arm in felt tip pen, each time you read it, you feel as if you are receiving the bad news again and again.

The worst surroundings in the world can be tolerated if the people in them are interesting and kind.

Normally it is not polite to go into somebody's room without knocking, but you can make an exception if the person is dead, or pretending to be dead.

Literature doesn't exactly have a strong mental-health track record.

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

For Beatrice, when we first met, I was lonely, and you were pretty. Now I am pretty lonely.

Anyone who knew Violet well could tell she was thinking hard, because her long hair was tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. Violet had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so her brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers, and gears, and she never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair.

For Beatrice, summer without you is as cold as winter. Winter without you, is even colder.

Every night I give a violin recital for six hours, and attendance is mandatory. The word 'mandatory' means that if you don't show up, you have to buy me a large bag of candy and watch me eat it.