quotablebookquotes discussion

Lemony Snicket is super quotable. Don't hold out on me.

"If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other books. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 1

"Like most fourteen-year-olds, she was right-handed, so the rocks skipped farther across the murky water when Violet used her right hand then when she used her left." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 2

"Being only twelve, Klaus of course had not read all the books in the Baudelaire library, but he had read a great many of them and had retained a lot of the information from his readings. He knew how to tell an alligator from a crocodile. He knew who killed Julius Caesar. And he knew much about the tiny, slimy animals found at Briny Beach, which he was examining now." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 3

"'It only seems scarey' Klaus said, as if reading his sister's thoughts, 'because of the mist.'" ~ The Bad Beginning, page 6

"It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus, and even Sunny felt in the time that followed. If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven't, you cannot possibly imagine it." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 11

"'Oh!' Said Sunny, and everyone knew what she meant. She meant, 'What a terrible place! I don't want to live there at all!'" ~ The Bad Beginning, page 21

“I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but first impressions are often entirely wrong. You can look at a painting for the first time, for example, and not like it at all, but after looking at it a little longer you may find it very pleasing. The first time you try Gorgonzola cheese you may find it too strong, but when you are older you may want to eat nothing but Gorgonzola cheese. Klaus, when Sunny was born, did not like her at all, but by the time she was six weeks old the two of them were thick as thieves. Your initial opinion on just about anything may change over time.” ~ The Bad Beginning, page 27

"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." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 34

"The room was a library. Not a public library, but a private library; that is, a collection of books belonging to Justice Strauss. There were shelves and shelves of them, on every wall from the floor to the ceiling, and separate shelves of them in the middle of the room. The only place were there weren't books was in one corner, where there were some large, comfortable-looking chairs and a wooden table with lamps hanging over them, perfect for reading. Although it was not as big as their parents library, it was cozy, and the Baudelaire children were thrilled." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 37

"Unless you have been very, very lucky, you have undoubtedly experienced events in your life that have made you cry. So unless you have been very, very lucky, you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 57

"There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many types of people, and everybody wants to read something different." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 84

"Klaus watched his sister leave the library and felt a wave of hopelessness wash over him" ~ The Bad Beginning, page 88

"All his life, Klaus had believed that if you read enough books, you could solve any problem, but now he wasn't so sure." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 88

"The book was long, and difficult to read, and Klaus became more and more tired as the night wore on. Occasionally his eyes would close. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over. He found himself reading the same sentence over and over." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 94

"Count Olaf had taken out a bottle of wine to pour himself some breakfast, but when he saw the book he stopped, and sat down." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 96

"Violet stayed still as a statue. She hadn't been listening to the last speech of Count Olaf's, knowing it would be full of the usual self-congratulatory nonsense and despicable insults." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 111

"To those who hadn't been around Violet long, nothing would have seemed unusual, but those who knew her well knew that when she tied her hair up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes, it meant that the gears and levers of her inventing brain were whirring at top speed." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 111

"For instance, if you are a bank robber - although I hope you aren't - you might go to the bank a few days before you planned to rob it. Perhaps wearing a disguise, you would look around the bank and observe security guards, cameras, and other obstacles, so you could plan how to avoid capture or death during your burglary." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 114

"Among Violet's many useful skills was a vast knowledge of different types of knots. The particular knot she was using was called the Devil's Tongue. A group of female Finnish pirates invented it back in the fifteenth century, and named it the Devil's Tongue because it twisted this way and that, in the most complicated and eerie way." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 116

"As she worked, she remembered something her parents had said to her when Klaus was born, and against when they brought Sunny home from the hospital. 'you are the eldest Baudelaire child,' they had said, kindly but firmly. 'And as the eldest, it will always be your responsibility to look after your younger siblings. Promise us that you will always watch out for them and make sure they don't get into trouble.'" ~ The Bad Beginning, page 117

"I am certain that over the course of your own life, you have noticed that people's rooms reflect their personalities. In my room, for instance, I have gathered a collection of objects that are important to me, including a dusty accordion on which I can play a few sad songs, a large bundle of notes on the activities of the Baudelaire orphans, and a blurry photograph, taken a very long time ago, of a woman whose name is Beatrice. These are items that are very precious and dear to me." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 124

"At this point in the story, I feel obliged to interrupt and give you one last warning. As I said at the very beginning, the book you are holding in your hands does not have a happy ending. It may appear now that Count Olaf will go to jail and that the three Baudelaire youngsters will live happily ever after with Justice Strauss, but it is not so. If you like, you may shut the book this instant and not read the unhappy ending that is to follow. You may spend the rest of your life believing that the Baudelaires triumphed over Count Olaf and lived the rest of their lives in the house and library of Justice Strauss, but that is not how the story goes." ~ The Bad Beginning, page 156

“Of all the people in the world who have miserable lives - and, as I'm sure you know, there are quite a few - the Baudelaire youngsters take the cake, a phrase which here means that more horrible things have happened them than just about anybody.” ~ The Reptile Room, page 2

"Count Olaf was so obsessed with getting his filthy hands on the money that he hatched a devious plan that gives me nightmares to this day." ~ The Reptile Room, page 2

"'What should we call him?' Klaus asked.
'You should call him Dr. Montgomery,' Mr. Poe replied, 'unless he tells you to call him Montgomery. Both his first and last names are Montgomery, so it doesn't make much difference.'
'His name is Montgomery Montgomery?' Klaus said, smiling.
'Yes, and I'm sure he's very sensitive about that, so don't ridicule him,' Mr. Poe said, coughing again into his handkerchief.” ~ The Reptile Room, page 6

"Mr. Poe, who led the way, didn't seem to notice the hedges at all, possibly because he was busy coaching the children on how to behave. 'Now, Klaus, don't ask too many questions right away. Violet, what happened to the ribbon in your hair? I thought you looked very distinguished in it. And somebody please make sure Sunny doesn't bite Dr. Montgomery. That wouldn't be a good first impression.'" ~ The Reptile Room, page 8

"Uncle Monty smiled at the orphans. 'That's quite all right,' he said. 'Questions show an inquisitive mind.'" ~ The Reptile Room, page 13

"If Uncle Monty had known known what bad luck was soon to come, he wouldn't have wasted a moment thinking about Gustav. I wish - and I'm sure you wish as well - we could go back in time and warn him, but we can't, and that's that." ~ The Reptile Room, page 16

"Count Olaf sounds like an awful person. I hope he is torn apart by wild animals someday. Wouldn't that be satisfying?" ~ The Reptile Room, page 20

"'Allowed?' Uncle Monty repeated. 'Of course not! You are implored to come inside here, my boy.'" ~ The Reptile Room, page 23

"I am very, very sorry to leave you hanging like that, but as I was writing the tale of the Baudelaire orphans, I happened to look at the clock and realized I was running late for a formal dinner party given by a friend of mine, Madame diLustro. Madame diLustro is a good friend, an excellent detective, and a fine cook, but she flies into a rage if you arrive even five minutes later than her invitation states, so you understand that I had to dash off. You must have thought, at the end of the previous chapter, that Sunny was dead and that this was the terrible thing that happened to the Baudelaires at Uncle Monty's house, but I promise you Sunny survives this particular episode. It is Uncle Monty, unfortunately, who will be dead, but not yet." ~ The Reptile Room, page 27

"The Incredibly Deadly Viper is one of the least dangerous and most friendly creatures in the animal kingdom. Sunny has nothing to worry about, and neither do you." ~ The Reptile Room, page 28

"There is a pair of snakes who have learned to drive a car so recklessly that they would run you over in the street and never stop to apologize." The Reptile Room, page 31

"Dramatic irony is a cruel occurrence, one that is almost always upsetting and I'm sorry to have it appear in this story, but Violet, Klaus, and Sunny have such unfortunate lives that it was only a matter of time before dramatic irony would rear its ugly head." ~ The Reptile Room, page 32

"As you and I listen to Uncle Monty tell the three Baudelaire orphans that no harm will ever come to them in the Reptile Room, we should be experiencing the strange feeling that accompanies the arrival of dramatic irony. This feeling is not unlike the sinking in one's stomach when one is in an elevator that suddenly goes down, or when you are snug in bed and your closet door suddenly creaks open to reveal the person who has been hiding there. For no matter how safe and happy the three children felt, no matter how comforting Uncle Monty's words were, you and I know that soon Uncle Monty will be dead and the Baudelaires will be miserable once again." ~ The Reptile Room, page 32

"For the rest of the morning they worked quietly ad steadily, realizing that their contentment here at Uncle Monty's house did not erase their parents' death, not at all, but at least it made them feel better after feeling so sad, for so long." ~ The Reptile Room, page 39

"One of the most difficult things to think about in life is one's regrets. Something will happen to you, and you will do the wrong thing, and for years afterward you will wish you had done something different." ~ The Reptile Room, page 43

"They tried picturing leaving Uncle Monty and living by themselves, trying to find jobs and take care of each other. It was a very lonely prospect. The Baudelaire children sat in sad silence awhile, and they were each thinking the same thing: They wished that their parents had never been killed in the fire, and that their lives had never been turned topsy-turvy the way they had. If only the Baudelaire parents were still alive, the youngsters wouldn't even have heard of Count Olaf, let alone have him settling into their home and undoubtedly making evil plants" ~ The Reptile Room, page 54

"Waiting is one of life's hardships. It is hard enough to wait for chocolate cream pie while burnt roast beef is still on your plate. It is plenty difficult to wait for Halloween when the tedious month of September is still ahead of you. But to wait for one's adopted uncle to come home while a greedy and violent man is upstairs was one of the worst waits the Baudelaires had ever experienced." ~ The Reptile Room, page 55

"The children nodded in agreement, and rose from the table. Leaving their dirty breakfast dishes behind, which is not a good thing to do in general but perfectly acceptable in the face of an emergency." ~ The Reptile Room, page 68

"When somebody is a little bit wrong - say, when a waited puts nonfat milk in your espresso macchiato, instead of lowfat milk - it is often quite easy to explain to them how and why they are wrong. But if somebody is surprisingly wrong - say, when a waiter bites your nose instead of taking your order - you can often be so surprised that you are unable to say anything at all. Paralyzed by how wrong the waiter is, your moth would hang slightly open and your eyes would blink over and over, but you would be unable to say a word." ~ The Reptile Room, page 73

"How clever of you to figure that out,' said a voice at the top of the stairs, and Violet, and Klaus were so surprised they almost dropped the lamp. It was Stephano, or, if you prefer, it was Count Olaf. It was the bad guy." ~ The Reptile Room, page 76

"Bad circumstances have a way of ruining things that would otherwise be pleasant." ~ The Reptile Room, page 79

"'Tadu,' Sunny murmured solemnly, which probably meant something along the lines of 'it's a loathsome situation in which we find ourselves.'" ~ The Reptile Room, page 83

"As he has promised, no harm has come to the Baudelaire orphans in the Reptile Room, but great harm had come to Uncle Monty." ~ The Reptile Room, page 90

"It is, as you know, very, very rude and usually unnecessary to use profanity, but the Baudelaire orphans were too terrified to point this out to Stephano. Taking one last look at their poor Uncle Monty, the three children followed Stephano to the door of the Reptile Room to get in the damn jeep." ~ The Reptile Room, page 94

"It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things." ~ The Reptile Room, page 96

"The Baudelaire orphans were crying not only for their Uncle Monty, but for their own parents, and this dark and curious feeling of falling that accompanies every great loss." ~ The Reptile Room, page 97

"It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are really right and the person who is really wrong is proving you wrong and proving himself, wrongly, right." ~ The Reptile Room, page 109

"Terrible accidents, I have found, are often odd.” ~ The Reptile Room, page 118

"Klaus sighed, and opened a book, and as at so many other times when the middle Baudelaire child did not want to think about his circumstances, he began to read." ~ The Reptile Room, page 127

"It was amazing, she thought, how everything having to do with Count Olaf was frightening." ~ The Reptile Room, page 130

"If one's safety is threatened, one often finds courage one didn't know one had, and the eldest Baudelaire found she could be brave enough to open the door." ~ The Reptile Room, page 130

"This is an absurd moral, for you and I both know that sometimes not only is it good to lie, it is necessary to lie." ~ The Reptile Room, page 142

"There are two basic types of panicking: standing still and no saying a world, and leaping all over the place babbling anything that come into your head. Mr. Poe was the leaping-and-babbling king. Klaus and Sunny had never seen the banker move so quickly or talk in such a high pitched voice. 'Goodness!' he cried. 'Golly! Good God! Blessed Allah! Zeus and Hera! Mary and Joseph! Nathaniel Hawthorne! Don't touch her! Grab her! Move closer! Run away! Don't move! Kill the snake! Leave it alone! Give it some food! Don't let it bite her!Lure the snake away! Here, snakey! Here, snakey snakey!'" ~ The Reptile Room, page 146

"'It's bitten her!' he cried. 'It's Bitten her! It's bitten her! Calm down! Get moving! Call an ambulance! Call the police! Call a scientist! Call my wife! This is terrible! This is awful! This is ghastly! This is phantasmagorical! This is-'" ~ The Reptile Room, page 147

"I confess that if I were in Violet's place, with only a few minutes to open a locked suitcase, instead of on the deck of my friend Bela's yacht, writing this down, I probably would have given up hope. I would have sunk to the floor of the bedroom and pounded my fists against the carpet wondering why in the world life was so unfair and filled with inconveniences.” ~ The Reptile Room, page 152

"If this were a book written to entertain small children, you would know what would happen next. With the villain's identity and evil plans exposed, the police would arrive on the scene and place him in a jail for the rest of his life, and the plucky youngsters would go out for pizza and live happily ever after. But this book is about the Baudelaire orphans, and you and I know that these three unfortunate children living happily ever after is about as likely as Uncle Monty returning to life." ~ The Reptile Room, page 175

"'This is not a game, you horrible man,' Mr. Poe said. 'Dominos is a game. Water polo is a game. Murder is a crime, and you will go to jail for it. I will drive you to the police station in town right this very minute.'" ~ The Reptile Room, page 177

"For Beatrice- I would much prefer it if you were alive and well."

" For although Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were about to experience events that would be both exciting and memorable, they would not be exciting and memorable like having your fortune told or going to a rodeo. Their adventure would be exciting and memorable like being chased by a werewolf through a field of thorny bushes at midnight with nobody around to help you." ~ The Wide Window, page 1

"Grammar is the greatest joy in life, don't you find?" ~ The Wide Window, page 17

"The Baudelaires looked at one another with bitter smiles. Sunny was right. It wasn't fair that their parents had been taken away from them. It wasn't fair that the evil and revolting Count Olaf was pursuing them wherever they went, caring for nothing but their fortune. It wasn't fair that they moved from relative to relative, with terrible things happening at each of their new homes, as if the Baudelaires were riding on some horrible bus that stopped only at stations of unfaireness and misery." ~ The Wide Window, page 23

"I am often very lonely up on this hill by myself, and when Mr. Poe wrote to me about your troubles I didn't want you to be as lonely as I was when I lost my dear Ike" ~ The Wide Window, page 27

"'Yes,' she said, in a faraway voice, 'he was my husband, but he was much more than that. He was my best friend, my partner in grammar, and the only person I knew who could whistle with crackers in his mouth.'" ~ The Wide Window, page 27

"'I lost Ike,' Aunt Josephine said, 'and I lost Lake Lachrymose. I mean, I didn't really lose it, of course. It's still down in the valley. But I grew up on its shores. I used to swim in it every day. I know which beaches were sandy and which were rocky. I knew all the islands in the middle of its waters and all the caves alongside it's shore. Lake Lachrymose felt like a friend to me. But when it took poor Ike away from me I was too afraid to go near it anymore. I stopped swimming in it. I never went to the beach again. I even put away all my books about it. The only way I can bear to look at it is from the Wide Window in the Library.'" ~ The Wide Window, page 28

"'The Lachrymose Leeches,' Aunt Josephine said, 'are quite different from regular leeches. They each have six rows of very sharp teeth ad one very sharp nose - they can smell even the smallest bit of food from far far away. The Lachrymose Leeches are usually quite harmless, preying only on small fish. But if they smell food on a human they will swarm around him'" ~ The Wide Window, page 32

"There are two kinds of fears; rational and irrational - or, in simple terms, fears that make sense and fears that don't. For instance, the Baudelaire orphans have a fear of Count Olaf, which makes perfect sense, because he is an evil man who wants to destroy them. But if they were afraid of lemon meringue pie, this would be an irrational fear, because lemon meringue pie is delicious and has never hurt a soul. Being afraid of a monster under the bed is perfectly rational, because there may in fact be a monster under your bed at any time, ready to eat you all up, but a fear of realtors is an irrational fear. Realtors, as I'm sure you know, are people who assist in the buying and selling of houses. Besides occasionally wearing an ugly yellow coat, the worst a realtor can do to you is show you a house that you find ugly, and so it is completely irrational to be terrified of them." ~ The Wide Window, page 34

"If you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, 'Well, at least I'm not being eaten by a bear.'" ~ The Wide Window, page 37

"When someone is in disguise, and the disguise is not very good, one can describe it as a transparent disguise. This does not mean that the person is wearing plastic wrap or glass or anything else transparent. It merely means that people can see through his disguise - that is, the disguise doesn't fool them for a minute." ~ The Wide Window, page 43

"They spent the rest of the afternoon trudging back up the hill carrying their groceries, but the heaviness of cucumbers and limes was nothing compared to the heaviness in the orphans' hearts." ~ The Wide Window, page 51

"Business cards, of course, are not proof of anything. Anyone can go to a print shop and have cards made that say anything they like. The king of Denmark can order business cards that say he sells golf balls. Your dentist can order business cards that say she is your grandmother. In order to escape from the castle of an enemy of mine, I once had cards printed that said I was an admiral in the French navy. Just because something is typed - whether it is typed on a business card or typed in a newspaper or book - this does not mean it is true." ~ The Wide Window, page 57

"The good people who are publishing this book have a concern that they have expressed to me. The concern is that readers like yourself will read my history of the Baudelaire orphans and attempt to imitate some of the things they do. So at this point in the story, in order to mollify the publishers - the word 'mollify' here means 'get them to stop tearing their hair out in worry' - please allow me to give you a piece of advice, even though I don't know anything about you. The piece of advice is as follows: If you ever need to get to Curdled Cave in a hurry, do not, under any circumstances, steal a boat and attempt to sail across Lake Lachrymose during a hurricane, because it is very dangerous and the chance of your survival are practically zero." ~ The Wide Window, page 145

"In front of the cave there was a sign saying it was for sale, and the orphans could not imagine who would want to buy such a phantasmagorical - the word 'phantasmagorical' here mean 'all the creepy, scary words you can think of putting together' - place." ~ The Wide Window, page 152

"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." ~ The Wide Window, page 167

"The scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light are very confusing, and quite frankly I can't make head or tail of them, even when my friend Dr. Lorenz explains them to me." ~ The Wide Window, page 179

"But even if they could go home it would be difficult for me to tell you what the moral of the story is. In some stories, it's easy. The moral of 'The Three Bears', for instance, is 'Never break into someone else's house'. The moral of 'Snow White' is 'Never eat apples'. The moral of World War One is 'Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.'" ~ The Wide Window, page 212

“Oftentimes, when people are miserable they will want to make other people miserable too. But it never helps.” ~ The Wide Window, page 74

“Tears are curious things, for like earthquakes or puppet shows, they can occur at any time, without any warning and without any good reason.” ~ The Wide Window, page 79

“Mr. Poe couldn't think of anything else to say that might have comforted the Baudelaire orphans, but I wish now that I had the power to go back in time and speak to these three sobbing children.” ~ The Wide Window, page 80

“There are men and women who are experts in the field of handwriting analysis. They are called graphologists, and they attend graphological schools in order to get their degrees in graphology. You might think that this situation would call for a graphologist, but there are time when an expert's opinion in unnecessary. For instance, if a friend of yours brought you her pet dog, and said she was concerned because it wasn't laying eggs, you would not have to be a veterinarian to tell her that dogs do not lay eggs and so there was nothing to worry about.” ~ The Wide Window, page 86

“But you can't invent things like time,' Violet said. 'You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers. You can invent things like steam-powered window waster. But you can't invent more time.” ~ The Wide Window, page 93

“There is a lizard called the chameleon that, as you probably know, can change color instantly to blend into its surroundings. Besides being slimy and clod-blooded, Captain Sham resembled the chameleon in that he was chameleonic, a word means 'able to blend in with any situation.” ~ The Wide Window, page 97

“To her dismay, they were the kind of peppermints that are each wrapped in a little bit of cellophane. Placing her hands underneath the table, she unwrapped three peppermints, using the utmost - the word 'utmost.' when it is used here means 'most' - care not to make any of those crinkling noises that come from unwrapping a candy and are so annoying in movie theaters.” ~ The Wide Window, page 101

“She took Sunny's coat off, and then her own, and dropped them both on the floor. Normally, of course, one should hang up one's coat on a hook or in a closet, but itchy hives are very irritating and tend to make one abandon such matters.” ~ The Wide Window, page 108

"There are few sights sadder than a ruined book.” ~ The Wide Window, page 109

“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.” ~ The Wide Window, page 119

“The Baudelaires were sad to see a framed photograph of a kind-looking man with a handful of crackers in one hand and his lips pursed as if he were whistling. It was Ike, and the Baudelaires knew that she had placed his photograph there because she was too sad to look at it.” ~ The Wide Window, page 120

“I have seen many amazing things in my long and troubled life history. I have seen a series of corridors built entirely out of human skulls. I have seen a volcano erupt and send a wall of lava crawling towards a small village. I have seen a women I loved picked up by an enormous eagle and flown to its high mountain next. But I still cannot imagine what it was like to watch Aunt Josephine's house topple into Lake Lachrymose.” ~ The Wide Window, page 126

“Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it would be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.” ~ The Wide Window, page 136

[sorry, I forgot to post this earlier]

"To Beatrice-
My love flew like a butterfly
Until death swooped down like a bat
As the poet Emma Montana McElroy said:
'That's the end of that'" ~ The Miserable Mill

"Sometime during your life - in fact, very soon - you may find yourself reading a book, and you may notice that a book's first sentence can often tel you what sort of story your book contains." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 1

"It pain me to tell you that once again Count Olaf would appear with yet another disgusting scheme, and that Mr. Poe would once again fail to do anything even remotely helpful." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 6

"The Baudelaire orphans looked worriedly out the window. They weren't very happy about just being dropped off in a strange place, as if they were a pizza being delivered instead of three children all alone in the world." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 8

"It is 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 news again and again." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 15

"This knowledge sits in my heart, heavy as a paperweight." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 20

"If an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice 'well, this isn't too bad. I don't have my left arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed,' but most of us would say something more along the lines of 'Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!'" ~ The Miserable Mill, page 26

"Morning is an important time of day, because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have. For instance, if you wake up to the sound of twittering birds, and find yourself in an enormous canopy bed, with a butler standing next to you holding a breakfast of freshly made muffins and hand-squeezed orange juice on a silver tray, you will know that your day will be a splendid one. If you wake up to the sound of church bells, and find yourself in a fairly big regular bed, with a butler standing next to you holding a breakfast of hot tea and toast on a plate, you will know that your day will be O.K. And if you wake up to the sound of somebody banging two metal pots together, and find yourself in a small bunk bed, with a nasty foreman standing in the doorway holding no breakfast at all, you will know that your day will be horrid." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 29

"Appearance matters a great deal because you can often tell a lot about people by looking at how they present themselves." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 32

"If someone had told me, that day at the beach, that before long I'd find myself using my four teeth to scrape the bark off trees, I would have said they were psychoneurotically disturbed." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 47

"A fair deal, as everyone knows, is when both people give something of more or less equal value. If you were bored with laying with your chemistry set, and you gave it to your brother in exchange for his dollhouse, that would be a fair deal. If someone offered to smuggle me out of the country in her sailboat, in exchange for free tickets to an ice show, that would be a fair deal. But working for years in a lumbermill in exchange for the owner's trying to keep Count Olaf away is an enormously unfair deal, and the three youngsters knew it." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 53

"The Baudelaire children wolfed down the peach, and under normal circumstances, it would not have been polite to eat something so quickly and so noisily, particularly in front of someone they did not know very well. But these were not at all normal, so even a manners expert would excuse them for their gobbling." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 56

"You have heard, many times I'm sure, that you should not judge a book by it's cover. But just as it is difficult to believe that a man who is not a doctor wearing a surgical mask and a while wig will turn out to be a charming person, it was difficult for the children to believe that Advanced Ocular Science was going to cause them anything but trouble." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 60

"Sunny did not eat the wood, of course, but she chewed on it and pretended it was a carrot, or an apple, or a beef and cheese enchilada, all of which she loved." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 68

"As anyone who's ever been to a doctor knows, doctors are not necessarily your friends, any more than mail deliverers are you friends, or butchers are you friends, or refrigerator repair-people are you friends. A doctor is a man or woman whose job it is to make you feel better, that's all, and if you've ever had a shot you know that the statement 'Doctors can't hurt you' is simply absurd." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 79

"The expression 'quiet as mice' is a puzzling one, because mice can often be very noisy, so people who are being quite as mice may in fact be squeaking and scrambling around. The expression 'quiet as mimes' is more appropriate, because mimes are people who perform theatrical routines without making a sound. Mimes are annoying and embarrassing, but they are much quieter than mice, so 'quiet as mimes' is a more proper way to describe how Violet and Sunny got up from their bunk, tiptoed across the dormitory, and walked out into the night." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 81

"If you have ever had a miserable experience, then you have probably had it said to you that you would feel better in the morning. This, of course, is utter nonsense, because a miserable experience remains a miserable experience even on the loveliest of morning." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 87

"'No, no,' Phil Said. 'It's fine. I've never liked my left leg so much, anyways.'" ~ The Miserable Mill, page 98

"Klaus grinned. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but it was a very interesting book, and I'm so pleased that it's coming in handy.'" ~ The Miserable Mill, page 107

"In the vast majority of cases, however, getting into trouble has nothing to do with one's self-esteem. It usually has much more to do with whatever is causing the trouble - a monster, a bus driver, a banana peel, killer bees, the school principal - than what you think of yourself." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 116

"Raisins are healthy, and they are inexpensive, and some people may even find them delicious. But they are rarely considered helpful." ~ The Miserable Mill, page 138

"'These brats know a lot of words,' Shirley said, in her ridiculously fake high voice. 'They're book addicts. But we can still create an accident and win the fortune!'" ~ The Miserable Mill, page 165

"For Beatrice - You will always be in my heart, in my mind, and in your grave." ~ The Austere Academy

"If you were going to give a gold medal tot he least delightful person on Earth, you would have to give that medal to a person named Carmelita Spats, and if you didn't give it to her, Carmelita Spats was the sort of person who would snatch it from your hands anyway. Carmelita Spats was rude, she was violent, and she was filthy, and it is really a shame that I must describe her to you, because there are enough ghastly and distressing things in this story without even mentioning such an unpleasant person." ~ The Austere Academy, page 1

"If you were going to give a gold medal to Count Olaf, you would have to lock it up someplace before the awarding ceremony, because Count Olaf was such a greedy and evil man that he would try to steal it beforehand." ~ The Austere Academy, page 2

"It looked exhausting and pointless, two things that should be avoided at all costs" ~ The Austere Academy, page 4

"Shyness is a curious thing, because, like quicksand, it can strike people at any time, and also, like quicksand, it usually makes its victims look down." ~ The Austere Academy, page 4

"Klaus had known for all twelve of his years that his older sister found a hand on her shoulder comforting - as long as the hand was attached to an arm, of course." ~ The Austere Academy, page 6

"The siblings wished that if Mr. Poe were really jealous of them he would attend Prufrock Preparatory School himself, and they could work at the bank." ~ The Austere Academy, page 8

"A person who designs buildings is called an architect, but in the case of Prufrock Prep a better term might be 'depressed architect.'" ~ The Austere Academy, page 10

"Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact." ~ The Austere Academy, page 14

"There is no worse sound in the world than somebody who cannot play the violin who insists on doing so anyway." ~ The Austere Academy, page 16

"Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course. Piracy, for example, is a tradition that has been carried on for hundreds of years, but that doesn't mean we should all attack ships and steal their gold." ~ The Austere Academy, page 19

"Whenever you see the words 'hee hee hee' in a book, or 'ha ha ha,' or 'har har har,' or 'heh heh heh,' or even 'ho ho ho,' those words mean somebody was laughing. In the case, however, the words 'hee hee hee' cannot really describe what Vice Principal Nero's laugh sounded like. The laugh was squeaky, and it was wheezy, and it had a rough crackly edge to it, as if Nero were eating tin cans and he laughed at the children. But most of all the laugh sounded cruel." ~ The Austere Academy, page 28

"It is always cruel to laugh at people, of course, although sometimes if they are wearing an ugly hat it is hard to control yourself." ~ The Austere Academy, page 29

"Overall, the shack was too miserable to serve as a storage space for old banana peels, let alone as a home for three young people, and I confess that if I had been told that it was my home I probably would have lain on the bales of hay and thrown a temper tantrum." ~ The Austere Academy, page 35

"The library turned out to be a very pleasant place, but it was not the comfortable chairs, the huge wooden bookshelves, or the hush of people reading that made the three siblings feel so good as they walked into the room. It is useless for me to tell you all about the brass lamps in the shapes of different fish, or the bright blue curtains that rippled like water as a breeze came in from the window, because although these were wonderful things they were no what made the three children smile. The Quagmire triplets were smiling, too, and although I have not researched the Quagmires nearly as much as I have the Baudelaires, I can say with reasonable accuracy that they were smiling for the same reason." ~ The Austere Academy, page 51

"Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is" ~ The Austere Academy, page 52

"If you have walked into a museum recently - whether you did so to attend an art exhibition or to escape from the police - you may have noticed a type of painting known as a triptych. A triptych has three panels, with something different painted on each of the panels. For instance, my friend Professor Reed made a triptych for me, and he painted fire on one panel, a typewriter on another, and the face of a beautiful, intelligent woman on the third. The triptych is entitled What Happened to Beatrice and I cannot look upon it without weeping.
I am a writer, and not a painter, but if I were to try and paint a triptych entitled The Baudelaire Orphans' Miserable Experiences at Prufrock Prep, I would paint Mr. Remora on one panel, Mrs. Brass on another, and a box of staples on the third, and the results would make me so sad that between the Beatrice triptych and the Baudelaire triptych I would scarcely stop weeping all day." ~ The Austere Academy, page 55

"I don't think people have made staples by hand since the fifteenth century." ~ The Austere Academy, page 63

"The expression 'following suit' is a curious one, because it has nothing to do with walking behind a matching set of clothing. If you follow suit, it means you do the same thing somebody else has just done. If all of your friends decided to jump off a bridge into the icy waters of an ocean or river, for instance, and you jumped in right after them, you would be following suit. You can see why following suit can be a dangerous thing to do, because you could end up drowning simply because somebody else thought of it first." ~ The Austere Academy, page 69

"There is one, and only one, advantage to somebody who cannot play the violin insisting on doing so anyways, and the advantage is that they often play so loudly that they cannot hear if the audience is having a conversation. It is extremely rude, of course, for an audience to talk during a concert performance, but when the performance is a wretched one, and lasts six hours, such rudeness can be forgiven." ~ The Austere Academy, page 73

"It is not very polite to interrupt a person, of course, but sometimes if the person is very unpleasant you can hardly stop yourself." ~ The Austere Academy, page 98

"As I'm sure you know, a good night's sleep helps you perform well in school, and so 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 mean 'flunk.'" ~ The Austere Academy, page 138

"Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make - bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake - if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this can lead to terrible trouble. For instance, one morning you might wake up and make the assumption that your bed was in the same place that it always was, even though you would have no real evidence that this was so. But when you got out of your bed, you might discover that it had floated out to sea, and now you would be in terrible trouble all because of the incorrect assumption that you'd made. You can see that it is better not to make too many assumptions, particularly in the morning." ~ The Austere Academy, page 187

"There's nothing wrong with athletics, but they shouldn't get in the way of your schoolwork" ~ The Austere Academy, page 200

"But unlike this book, the dictionary also discusses words that are far more pleasant to contemplate. The word 'bubble' is in the dictionary, for instance, as is the word 'peacock,' the word 'vacation,' and the words 'the' 'author's' 'execution' 'has' 'been' 'canceled,' which makes a sentence that is always pleasant to hear." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 2

"I am sorry to say that Mr. Poe had not done a very good job so far, and that the Baudelaires had learned that the only thing they could rely on with Mr. Poe was that he always had a cough." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 4

"The children knew, as I'm sure you know, that there is usually no reason to be afraid of the dark, but even if you are not particularly afraid of something, you might not want to get near it" ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 15

"As I'm sure you know, the expression 'It's all uphill from here' has nothing to do with walking up stairs - it merely means that things will get better in the future." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 16

"If you were to take a plastic bag and place it inside a large bowl, and then, using a wooden spoon, stir the bag around and around the bowl, you could use the expression 'a mixed bag' to describe what you had in front of you, but you would not be using the expression in the same way I am about to use it now. Although 'a mixed bag' sometimes refers to a plastic bag that has been stirred in a bowl, more often it is used to describe a situation that has both good parts and bad parts. An afternoon at a movie theater, for instance, would be a mixed bag if you favourite movie were showing but if you had to eat gravel instead of popcorn. A trip to the zoo would be a very mixed bag if the weather were beautiful, but all the man- and woman-eating lions were running around loose." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 37

"For one thing, the penthouse was simply too big. Besides the seventy-one bedrooms, there were a number of living rooms, dining rooms, breakfast rooms, snack rooms, sitting rooms, standing rooms, ballrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and an assortment of rooms that seem to have no purpose at all." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 39

"There are many, many things that are difficult in this life, but one thing that isn't difficult at all is figuring out whether someone is excited or not when they open a present." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 48

"If you are a baby, your family will sere you in your underwear many times, and there's no use being embarrassed about it" ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 56

"He was wrong in thinking that by saying 'Nnphnn!' Sunny had been complaining about getting undressed in front of her siblings. Sunny's oversized suit had muffled the word she was really saying, and it was a word that still haunts me in my dreams as I toss and turn each night, images of Beatrice and her legacy filling my weary, grieving brain no matter where in the world I travel and no matter what important evidence I discover." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 56

"If you are ever forced to take a chemistry class, you will probably see, at the front of the classroom, a large chart divided into squares, with different numbers and letters in each of them. This chart is called the table of elements, and scientists like to say that it contains all the substances that make up our world. Like everyone else, scientists are wrong from time to time, and it is easy to see that they are wrong about the table of elements. Because although this table contains a great many elements, from the element oxygen, which is found in the air, to the element of aluminum, which is found in cans of soda, 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. The element of surprise is not a gas like oxygen, or a solid, like aluminum. The element of surprise is an unfair advantage, and it can be found in situations in which one person has sneaked up on another. The surprised person - or, in this sad case, the surprised person - are too stunned to defend themselves and the sneaky person has the advantage of the element of surprise." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 59

"Arguing with somebody is never pleasant, but sometimes it is useful and necessary to do so. Just the other day, for example, it was useful and necessary for me to have an unpleasant argument with a medical student because if he hadn't let me borrow his speedboat I would now be chained inside a very small waterproof room, instead of sitting in a typewriter factory typing our this woeful tale." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 67

"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." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 91

"'Every problem has a solution,' the doorman said. 'At least, that's what a close associate of mine says. Sometimes it just takes a long time to find the solution - even if it's right in front of your nose.'" ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 112

"There have been only five burglars in the history of robbery who have specialized in rope. All five of these burglars were caught and sent to prison, which is why scarcely any people lock up their rope for safekeeping." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 132

"One of the greatest myths in the world - and the phrase 'greatest myths is just a fancy way of saying 'big fat lies' - is that troublesome things get less and less troublesome if you do them more and more." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 161

"Troublesome things tend to remain troublesome no matter how many times you do them, and that you should avoid doing them unless they are absolutely urgent." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 162

"The passageway was still as dark as a bar of extra-dark chocolate sitting in a planetarium covered in a thick, black blanket" ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 162

"It made the Baudelaire sisters a little sad to see all those books sitting in the library unread and unnoticed, like stray dogs or lost children that nobody wanted to take home." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 172

"Sometimes words are not enough. There are some circumstances so utterly wretched that I cannot describe them in sentences or paragraphs or even a whole series of books." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 184

"Myths are often entertaining, but they're never very helpful." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 190

"Sunny did not reply, but her siblings were not alarmed because they imagined it was difficult to say much when you had a mouthful of wall." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 193

"The French expression 'cul-de-sac' describes what the Baudelaire orphans found when they reached the end of the dark hallway, and like all French expressions, it is most easily understood when you translate each French word into English. The word 'de,' for instance is a very common French world, I would be certain that 'de' means 'of.' The word 'sac' is less common, but I can fairly certain that it means something like 'mysterious circumstances.' And the word 'cul' is such a rare French word that I am forced to guess at its translation, and my guess is that in this case it would mean 'At the end of the dark hallway, the Baudelaire children found an assortment,' so that the expression 'cul-de-sac' here means 'At the end of the dark hallway, the Baudelaire children found an assortment of mysterious circumstances.'" ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 203

"One of my prized possessions is a small wooden box with a special lock on it that is more than five hundred years old and works according to a secret code that my grandfather taught me. My grandfather learned it from his grandfather, and his grandfather learned it from his grandfather, and I would teach it to my grandchild if I thought that I would ever have a family of my own instead of living out the remainder of my days all alone in this world." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 212

"But your imaginings would be ersatz, as all imaginings are." ~ The Ersatz Elevator, page 253

"For Beatrice - When we were together I felt breathless. Now, you are." ~The Vile Village

"No Matter who you are, no matter where you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read. For instance, if you are walking in the mountains, and you don't read a sign that says 'Beware of Cliff' because you are busy reading a joke book instead, you may suddenly find yourself walking on air rather than on a sturdy bed of rocks. If you are baking a pie for your friends, and you read an article entitled 'How to Build a Chair' instead of a cookbook, you pie will probably end up tasting like wood and nails instead of like crust and fruity filling. And if you insist on reading this book instead of something more cheerful, you will most certainly find yourself moaning in despair instead of wriggling in delight, so if you have any sense at all you will put this book down and pick up another one." ~The Vile Village, page 1

"The quoting of an aphorism, like the angry barking of a dog or the smell of overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates something helpful is about to happen." ~The Vile Village, page 13

"After even the first few steps, the disadvantages of the bus ride seemed like small potatoes. 'Small potatoes' is a phrase which has nothing to do with root vegetables that happen to be tiny in size. Instead, it refers to the change in one's feelings for something when it is compared with something else. If you were walking in the rain, for instance, you might be worried about getting wet, but if you turned the corner and saw a pack of vicious dogs, getting wet would suddenly become small potatoes next to getting chased down an alley and barked at, or possibly eaten." ~ The Vile Village, page 26

"Nevermore Tree was gargantuan, a word which here means 'having attained an inordinate amount of botanical volume.'" ~ The Vile Village, page 64

"The expression 'a bold from the blue' describes something so surprising that i makes you head spin, your legs wobble, and your body buzz with astonishment - as if a bold of lightening suddenly came down from a clear blue sky and struck you at full force. Unless you are a lightbulb, an electrical appliance, or a tree that is tired of standing upright, encountering a bold from the blue is not a pleasant experience." ~ The Vile Village, page 69

"It is true, of course, that there is no way of knowing for sure whether or not you can trust someone, for the simple reason that circumstances change all the time. You might know someone for several years, for instance, and trust him completely as your friend, but circumstances could change and he could become very hungry, and before you knew it you could be boiling in a soup opt, because there is no way of knowing for sure. I myself fell in love with a wonderful women who was so charming and intelligent that I trusted that she would be my bride, but there was no way of knowing for sure, and all too soon circumstances changed and she ended up marrying someone else, all because of something she read in The Daily Punctilio." ~ The Vile Village, page 73

"'Normally I don't approve of children staying up late,' he said finally, 'unless they are reaidng a very good book, seeing a wonderful movie, or attending a dinner party with fascinating guests.'" ~ The Vile Village, page 82

The Carnivorous Carnival

"Miracles are like meatballs, because nobody can exactly agree what they are made of, where they come from, or how often they should appear."

"Grief, a type of sadness that most often occurs when you have lost someone you love, is a sneaky thing, because it can disappear for a long time, and then pop back up when you least expect it."

"Although 'jumping to conclusions' is an expression, rather than an activity, it is as dangerous as jumping off a cliff, jumping in front of a moving train, and jumping for joy. If you jump off a cliff, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful landing unless there is something below you to cushion your fall, such as a body of water or an immense pile of tissue paper, If you jump in front of moving train, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful voyage unless you are wearing some sort of train-proof suit. And if you jump for joy, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful bump on the head, unless you make sure you are standing someplace with very high ceilings, which joyous people rarely do. Clearly, the solution to anything involving jumping is either to make sure you are jumping to a safe place, or not jumping at all.
But it is hard not to jump at all when you are jumping to conclusions, and it is impossible to make sure that you are jumping to a safe place, because all 'jumping to conclusions' means is that you are believing something is true even though you don't actually know whether it is or not." ~ The Vile Village, page 105

"When one's stomach is as fluttery as all that, it is nice to take a short break to lie down and perhaps sip a fizzy beverage, but there was no time for such things." ~ The Vile Village, page 110

"In this large and fierce world of ours, there are many, many unpleasant places to be. You can be in a river swarming with angry electric eels, or in a supermarket filled with vicious long-distance runners. You can be in a hotel that has no room service, or you can be lost in a forest that is slowly filling up with water. You can be in a hornet's nest or in an abandoned airport or in the office of a pediatric surgeon, but one of the most unpleasant things that can happen is to find yourself in a quandary.which is where the Baudelaire orphans found themselves that night. Finding yourself in a quandary means that everything seems confusing and dangerous and you don't know what in the world to do about it, and it is one of the worst unpleasantries you can encounter." ~ The Vile Village, page 121

"Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some bloodthirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself, particularly if the idea comes from a sinister villain." ~ The Vile Village, page 171

"A huge cloud of dust is not a beautiful thing to look at. Very few painters have done portraits of huge clouds of dust or included them in their landscapes or still lifes. Film directors rarely choose huge clouds of dust to play the lead roles in romantic comedies, and as far as my research has shown, a huge cloud of dust has never placed higher than twenty-fifth in a beauty pageant. Nevertheless, as the Baudelaire orphans stumbled around the cell, dropped each half of the battering ram and listening to the sound of crows flying in circles outside, they stared at the huge cloud of dust as if it were a thing of great beauty." ~ The Vile Village, page 201

"For Beatrice -
Summer without you is as cold as winter.
Winter without you is even colder." ~ The Hostile Hospital

"The outside of the building was covered with faded poster advertising what was sold, and by the eerie light of the half-moon, the Baudelaires could see that fresh limes, plastic knives, canned meat, white envelopes, mango-flavored candy, red wine, leather wallets, fashion magazines, goldfish bowls, sleeping bags, roasted figs, cardboard boxes, controversial vitamins, and many other things were available inside the store. Nowhere on the building, however, was there a poster advertising help, which is really what the Baudelaires needed." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 3

"For instance, if you woke up in the middle of the night and saw a masked woman trying to crawl through your bedroom window, you might call your mother or father to help you push her back out. If you found yourself hopelessly lost in the middle of a strange city, you might ask the police to give you a ride home. And if you were an author locked in an Italian restaurant that was slowly filling up with water, you might call upon your acquaintances in the locksmith, pasta, and sponge business to come and rescue you." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 6

"Of all the ridiculous expressions people use - and people use a great many ridiculous expressions - one of the most ridiculous is 'No news is good news.' 'No new is good news' simply means that if you don't hear from someone, everything is probably fine, and you can see at once why this expression makes such little sense, because everything being fine is only one of many reasons why someone may not contact you. Perhaps they are tied up. Maybe they are surrounded by fierce weasels, or perhaps they are wedged tightly between two refrigerators and cannot get themselves out. The expression might well be changed to 'No new is bad news,' except that people may not be able to contact you because they have just been crowned king or are competing in a gymnastics tournament. The point is that there is no way to know why someone has not contacted you, until they contact you and explain themselves. For this reason, the sensible expression would be ;No news is no news,' except that it is so obvious it is hardly an expression at all" ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 21

"As I'm sure you know, it is rarely a good idea to get into an automobile with somebody you haven't met before, particularly if that person believes in such nonsense as 'No news is good news.' But it is never a good idea to stand around a flat and empty landscape while the police are closing in to arrest you for a crime you have not committed." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 32

"And I would hop like nobody has ever hopped before, if I could somehow go back to that terrible Thursday, and stop Beatrice from attending that afternoon tea where she met Esmé Squalor for the first time." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 33

"An associate of mine named William Congreve once wrote a very sad play that begins with the line 'Music has charms to sooth a savage beast,' a sentence which here means that if you are nervous or upset, you might listen to some music to calm you down or cheer you up. For instance, as I crouch here behind the alter of the Cathedral of the Alleged Virgin, a friend of mine is playing a sonata on the pipe organ, to calm me down and so that the sounds of my typewriter will not be heard by the worshipers sitting in the pews. The mournful melody of the sonata reminds me of a tune my father used to sing when he did the dishes, and as I listen to it I can temporarily forget six or seven of my troubles." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 37

"Because getting a cheerful balloon helps people picture getting better, and if you picture something it makes it so." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 45

"A cheerful attitude is the most effect tool against sickness." ~ Hostile Hospital, page 45

"In my opinion, children should be seen and not heard. I'm an adult, so it follows that I should be heard and not seen. That's why I work exclusively over the intercom." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 58

"'Pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity,' Sunny said, which was something she had said only once before. It meant something along the lines of 'I must admit I don't have the faintest idea of what is going on,' and the first time the youngest Baudelaire had said it, she had just been brought home from the hospital where she was born, and was looking at her siblings as they leaned over her crib to greet her." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 71

"With any word, there are subconscious associations, which simply means that certain words make you think of certain things, even if you don't want to. The word 'cake,' for example, might remind you of your birthday, and the words 'prison warden' might remind you of someone you haven't seen in a very long time. The word 'Beatrice' reminds me of a volunteer organization that was swarming with corruption, and the word 'midnight' reminds me that I must keep writing this chapter very quickly or else I will probably drown." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 76

"Just about everything in this world is easier said than done, with the exception of 'systematically assisting Sisyphus's stealthy, cry-susceptible sister,' which is easier done than said." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 80

"I get a small quiver of shame in my stomach whenever I remember it." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 90

"Was it really necessary? Was it absolutely necessary to steal that sugar bowl from Esme Squalor?" ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 90

"Page thirteen of the Baudelaire file was not a crowded sheet of paper - there was just one photography and a sentence to make an author cry himself to sleep even years after the photograph was taken, or to make three siblings sit and stare at a page for a long time, as if an entire book were printed on one sheet of paper." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 107

"They could only stare at Esme's shoes and wonder why she as wearing footwear that was so violent and impractical." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 116

"When the bald associate had mentioned a sleeping beauty, he was referring to a fairy tale that you have probably heard one thousand times. Like all fairy tales, the story of Sleeping Beauty begins with 'Once upon a time,' and continues with a foolish young princess who makes a witch very angry, and then takes a nap until her boyfriend wakes her up with a kiss and insists on getting married, at which point the story ends with the phrase 'happily ever after.' The story is usually illustrated with fancy drawings of the napping princess, who always looks very glamorous and elegant, with her hair neatly combed and a long silk gown keeping her comfortable as she snores away for years and years." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 182

"Operating theaters are not nearly as popular as dramatic theaters, musical theaters, and movie theaters, and it is easy to see why. A dramatic theater is a large, dark room in which actors perform a play, and if you are in the audience, you can enjoy yourself by listening to the dialog and looking at the costumes. A musical theater is a large, dark room in which musicians preform a symphony, and if you are in the audience you can enjoy yourself by listening to the melodies and watching the conductor wave his little stick around. And a movie theater is a large, dark room in which a projectionist shows a film, and if you are in the audience, you can enjoy yourself by eating popcorn and gossiping about movie stars. But an operating theater is a large, dark room in which doctors preform medical procedures, and if you are in the audience, the best thing to do is to leave at once because there is never anything on display in an operating theater but pain, suffering and discomfort, and for this reason most operating theaters have been closed down or have been turned into restaurants." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 189

"When you read as many books as Klaus Baudelaire, you are going to learn a great deal of information that might not become useful for a long time. You might read a book that would teach you all about the exploration of outer space, even if you do not become an astronaut until you are eighty years old. You might read a book about how to preform tricks on ice skates, and then not be forced to preform these tricks for a few weeks. You might read a book on how to have a successful marriage, when the only women you will ever love has married someone else and then perished one terrible afternoon." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 196

"I am alone this evening, and I am alone because of a cruel twist of fate, a phrase which here means that nothing has happened the way I thought it would." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 213

"'It doesn't take courage to kill someone,' Klaus said. 'It takes a severe lack of moral stamina.'" ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 220

"There are many things in this world I do not know. I do not know how butterflies get out of their cocoons without damaging their wings. I do not know why anyone would boil vegetables when roasting them is tastier. I do not know how to make olive oil, and I do not know why dogs bark before an earthquake, and I do not know why some people voluntarily choose to climb mountains where it is freezing and difficult t breathe, or live in the suburbs, where the coffee is watery and all the houses look alike." ~ The Hostile Hospital, page 246

"It is often said that if you have a room with a view, you will feel peaceful and relaxed, but if the room is a caravan hurtling down a steep and twisted road, and the view is an eerie mountain range racing backward away from you, while chilly mountain winds sting your face and toss dust into your eyes, then you will not feel one bit of peace or relaxation." -The Slippery Slope, page 13

"Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like." -The Slippery Slope, page 21

"Taking one's chances is like taking a bath, because sometimes you end up feeling comfortable and warm, and sometimes there is something terrible lurking around that you cannot see until it is too late and you can do nothing else but scream and sling to a plastic duck." -The Slippery Slope, page 43

"'Nothing spoils a nice car trip like a whiny kidnapping victim.'" -The Slippery Slope, page 49

"It is always tedious when someone says that if you don't stop crying, they will give you something to cry about, because if you are crying than 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." -The Slippery Slope, page 50

(sad face to the wrong use of "than" in this quote)

"That night was a dark day. Of course, all nights are dark days, because night is simply a badly lit version of day, due to the fact that the Earth travels around and around the sun reminding everyone that it is time to get out of bed and start the day with a cup of coffee or a secret message folded up into a paper airplane that can sail out the barred window of a ranger station." -The Slipper Slope, page 67

"When you have many questions on your mind, and you suddenly have an opportunity to ask them, the questions tend to crowd together and trip over one another, much like passengers on a crowded train when it reaches a popular station." -The Slippery Slope, page 89

"'And in my experience, well-read people are less likely to be evil.'" -The Slippery Slope, page 95

"Having an aura of menace is like having a pet weasel, because you rarely meet someone who has one, and when you do it makes you want to hide under the coffee table." -The Slippery Slope, page 122

"'Fire can solve any problem in the world.'" -The Slippery Slope, page 127

"It is one of the peculiar truths of life that people often say things that they know full well are ridiculous." -The Slippery Slope, page 157

"'I think everyone's parents have secrets. You just have to know where to look for them.'" -The Slippery Slope, page 161

"It is so rare in this world to meet a trustworthy person who truly wants to help you, and finding such a person can make you feel warm and safe, even if you are in the middle of a windy valley high up in the mountains." -The Slippery Slope, page 203

"'Everyone should keep a few secrets.'" -The Slippery Slope, page 211

"Deciding on the right thing to do in a situation is a bit like deciding on the right thing to wear to a party." -The Slippery Slope, page 250

"It is one of life's bittersweet truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting." -The Grim Grotto, page 109

"It is often difficult to admit that someone you love is not perfect, or to consider aspects of a person that are less than admirable." -The Grim Grotto, page 148

"'Life in Olaf's troupe sounded like it was going to be glamorous and fun, but we've ended up doing more murder, arson, blackmail, and assorted violence than I would have preferred.'" -The Grim Grotto, page 219

"'People aren't either wicked or noble,' the hook-handed man said. 'They're like chef's salad with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.'" -The Grim Grotto

"Behind these two booths was an enormous roller coaster, a phrase which here mean 'a series of small carts where people can sit and race up and down steep and frightening hills of tracks, for no discernible reason'" - The Carnivorous Carnival, page 16

"As I'm sure you know, whenever you are examine someone else's belongings, you are bound to learn many interesting things about the person of which you were not previously aware. You might examine some letters you sister received recently, for instance, and learn that she was planning on running away with an archduke. You might examine the suitcase of another passenger on a train you are taking, and learn that he had been secretly photographing you for the past six months. I recently looked in the refrigerator of one of my enemies and learned she was a vegetarian, or at least pretending to be one, or had a vegetarian visiting her for a few days. And as the Baudelaire orphans examined some of the objets in Olaf's trunk, they learned a great deal of unpleasant things." - the Carnivorous Carnival, page 36

"It was confusing pretending to be completely different people, particularly because it had been so long since the Baudelaires were able to be the people they really were." - The Carnivorous Carnival, page 47

"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." - The Carnivorous Carnival, page 51

"Miracles are like meatballs, because nobody can exactly agree on what they are made of, where they come from, or how often they should appear. Some people say that a sunrise is a miracle, because it is somewhat mysterious and often very beautiful, but other people say it is simply a fact of life, because it happens every day and far too early in the morning. Some people say that a telephone is a miracle, because it sometimes seems wondrous that you can talk with somebody who is thousands of miles away, and other people say it is merely a manufactured device fashioned out of metal parts, electronic circuitry, and wires that are very easily cut. And some people say that sneaking out of a hotel is a miracle, particularly if the lobby is swarming with policemen, and other people say it is simply a fact of life, because it happens every day and far too early in the morning. So you might think that there are so many miracles in the world that you can scarcely count them, or that there are so few that they are scarcely worth mentioning, depending on whether you spend your mornings gazing at a beautiful sunset or lowering yourself into a back alley with a rope made of matching towels." - The Carnivorous Carnival, page 70

"There are many different things in this world to hide, but a secret is not one of them. It is difficult to hide an airplane, for instance, because you generally need to find a deep hole or an enormous haystack, and sneak the airplane inside in the middle of the night, but it is easy to hide a secret about an airplane, because you can merely write it on a tiny piece of paper and tape it to the bottom of your mattress any time you are at home. It is difficult to hide a symphony orchestra, because you usually need to rent a soundproof room and borrow as many sleeping bags as you can find, but it is easy to hide a secret about a symphony orchestra, because you can merely whisper it into the ear of a trustworthy friend or music critic. And it is difficult to hind yourself, because you sometimes need to stuff yourself into the trunk of an automobile, or concoct a disguise out of whatever you can find, but it is easy to hide a secret about yourself because you can merely type it into a book and hope it falls into the right hands. My dear sister, if you are reading things I am still alive, and heading north to try and find you." - The Carnivorous Carnival, page 123

"One of the most troublesome things in life is that what you do or do not want has very little to do with what does or does not happen." - The Carnivorous Carnival, page 144

"There are times to stay put, and what you want will come to you, and there are times to go out into the world and find such a thing for yourself.” - The Carnivorous Carnival, page 204