Quotes from Lemony Snicket

the table of elements does not contain one of the most powerful elements that make up our world, and that is the element of surprise.

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.

It was darker than a pitch-black panther, covered in tar, eating black licorice at the very bottom of the deepest part of the Black Sea.

The difference between a house and a home is like the difference between a man and a woman-- it might be embarrassing to explain, but it would be very unusual to get them confused.

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.

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

Everything. A letter may be coded, and a word may be coded. A theatrical performance may be coded, and a sonnet may be coded, and there are times when it seems the entire world is in code. Some believe that the world can be decoded by performing research in a library. Others believe that the world can be decoded by reading a newspaper. In my case, the only thing that made sense of the world was you, and without you the world will seem as garbled and tragic as a malfunctioning typewrit9.

You may want to keep a commonplace book which is a notebook where you can copy parts of books you think are in code, or take notes on a series of events you may have observed that are suspicious, unfortunate, or very dull. Keep your commonplace book in a safe place, such as underneath your bed, or at a nearby dairy.

You don't spend your life hanging around books without learning a thing or two.

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.

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.

I am heartbroken, but I have been heartbroken before, and this might be the best for which I can hope.

Life never end when you are in it.

Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean that it's nonsense.

Simply put, dramatic irony is when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning. For instance, if you were in a restaurant and said out loud, "I can't wait to eat the veal marsala I ordered," and there were people around who knew that the veal marsala was poisoned and that you would die as soon as you took a bite, your situation would be one of dramatic irony.

Nowhere in the world is safe," Count Olaf said. Not with you around," Violet agreed. I'm no worse than anyone else," Count Olaf said.

Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don't tell them they aren't. Sit with them and have a drink.

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.

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

Reader: Dear Mr. Snicket, What is the best way to keep a secret? Lemony Snicket : Tell it to everyone you know, but pretend you are kidding.

In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle.

E!" Klaus cried. "E as in Exit!" The Baudelaires ran down E as in Exit, but when they reached the last cabinet, the row was becoming F as in Falling File Cabinets, G as in Go the Other Way! and H as in How in the World Are We Going to Escape?

It is most likely that I will die next to a pile of books I was meaning to read.

I'm sure you have heard it said that appearance does not matter so much, and that it is what's on the inside that counts. This is, of course, utter nonsense, because if it were true then people who were good on this inside would would never have to comb their hair or take a bath, and the whole world would smell even worse than it already does.