Daniel Handler > Quotes

“Stop saying no offense,” I said, “when you say offensive things. It’s not a free pass.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“I was stupid, the official descriptive phrase for happy.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“Either you have the feeling or you don't. Hawk Davies”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.”
― Daniel Handler

“Ed, it was everything, those nights on the phone, everything we said until late became later and then later and very late and finally to go to bed with my ear warm and worn and red from holding the phone close close close so as not to miss a word of what it was, because who cared how tired I was in the humdrum slave drive of our days without each other. I’d ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you, and I did. But that’s why right there it was doomed. We couldn’t only have the magic nights buzzing through the wires. We had to have the days, too, the bright impatient days spoiling everything with their unavoidable schedules, their mandatory times that don’t overlap, their loyal friends who don’t get along, the unforgiven travesties torn from the wall no matter what promises are uttered past midnight, and that's why we broke up.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“I started making plans, thinking we would get that far.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“I’m not a romantic, I’m a half-wit. Only stupid people would think I’m smart. I’m not something anyone should know. I’m a lunatic wandering around for scraps, I’m like every single miserable moron I’ve scorned and pretended I didn’t recognize. I’m all of them, every last ugly thing in a bad last-minute costume. I’m not different, not at all, not different from any other speck of a thing. I’m a blemished blemish, a ruined ruin, a stained wreck so failed I can’t see what I used to be.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“I’d ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you, and I did.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“I'm telling you why we broke up, Ed. I'm writing this letter, the whole truth of why it happened. And the truth is that I goddamn loved you so much.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“And the truth is that I'm not, Ed, is what I wanted to tell you. I'm not arty like everyone says who doesn't know me, I don't paint, I can't draw, I play no instrument, I can't sing. I'm not in plays, I wanted to say, I don't write poems. I can't dance except tipsy at dances. I'm not athletic, I'm not a goth or a cheerleader, I'm not treasurer or co-captain. I'm not gay and out and proud, I'm not that kid from Sri Lanka, not a triplet, a prep, a drunk, a genius, a hippie, a Christian, a slut, not even one of those super-Jewish girls with a yarmulke gang wishing everyone a happy Sukkoth. I'm not anything, this is what I realized ... I like movies, everyone knows I do -- I love them -- but I will never be in charge of one because my ideas are stupid and wrong in my head. There's nothing different about that, nothing fascinating, interesting, worth looking at.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“There are so many movies like this, where you thought you were smarter than the screen but the director was smarter than you, of course he's the one, of course it was a dream, of course she's dead, of course, it's hidden right there, of course it's the truth and you in your seat have failed to notice in the dark.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“And this note was a jittery time bomb, ticking beneath my normal life, in my pocket all day firecely reread, in my purse all week until I was afraid it would get crushed or snooped, in my drawer between two dull books to escape my mother and then in the box and now thunked back to you. 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 stop thinking about you.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“How wrong to think I was anyone else, like thinking grass stains make you a beautiful view, like getting kissed makes you kissable, like feeling warm makes you coffee, like liking movies makes you a director. How utterly incorrect to think it any other way, a box of crap is treasures, a boy smiling means it, a gentle moment is a life improved.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“...the moron who thought love was forever.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“You either have the feeling or you don’t.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up. Like a tie at a tag sale, some perfect thing in a crate of nothing, you were just there, uninvited, and now suddenly the party was over and you were all I wanted. I hadn't even been looking, not for you, and now you were my heart's desire.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“Someone can break your heart, leave you dead on the lawn, and still you never learn what to say to stop it all over again.”
― Daniel Handler, Adverbs

“This is love, to sit with someone you've known forever in a place you've been meaning to go, and watching as their life happens to them until you stand up and it's time to go.”
― Daniel Handler, Adverbs

“How do you forget something? You just walk away from it, those who are still alive. There are so few clearings in our hearts and minds, so few places where something can't grow on top of whatever happened to us before, and this is love too. ”
― Daniel Handler, Adverbs

“This is like a cookie, it tastes like a cookie having sex with a doughnut.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“They looked at each other like a pair of parentheses.”
― Daniel Handler, Adverbs

“I'm not a believer in predetermined fates, being rewarded for one's efforts. I'm not a believer in karma. The reason why I try to be a good person is because I think it's the right thing to do. If I commit fewer bad acts there will be fewer bad acts, maybe other people will join in committing fewer bad acts, and in time there will be fewer and fewer of them.”
― Daniel Handler

“I hadn't even been looking, not for you, and now you were my heart's desire.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“It is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes; it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.”
― Daniel Handler, Adverbs

“Undeveloped, the whole thing,tossed into a box before we really had a chance to know what we had, and that's why we broke up.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“A girl meets a boy, Ed, and everything changes, or so she says.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“Take back the smile and the night, take it all back, I wish I could.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“Twenty-six,” you said. “One for each day we’ve been together, Min.”Somebody oohed. Somebody shushed them.
“And I hope that someday I’ll do another something stupid and I’ll have to say it a million times because that’s how long it’ll be, together with you, Min. With you.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“...there's not enough ink and paper to say all I wanted.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up