Daniel Handler Quotes - Page 10

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.

For obvious reasons, I never told you about my notebook, with a cover as green as mansions long ago, which I use as a commonplace book, a phrase which here means 'place where I have collected passages from some of the most important books I have read.

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.

Are you who I think you are?

Stretched out in front of me was my time as an adult, and then a skeleton, and then nothing except perhaps a few books on a few shelves.

It is my fate that some of my questions will never be answered.

...in life it is often the tiny details that end up being the most important.

A good thing to do when one is sitting, eating, and resting is to have a conversation.

It is often said that reading is a gift, but to my mind that is an insufficient description, for the size of the gift of reading is so vast that it is difficult to see what is outside its wrapping.

...there's not enough ink and paper to say all I wanted.

That night it felt that somehow by flicking them off the roof, the matches would burn down everything, the sparks from the tips of the flames, torching the world and all the heartbroken people in it.

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.

There is no easy way to train an apprentice. My two tools are example and nagging.

Sooner or later, everyone's story has an unfortunate event or two...The solution, of course, is to stay as far away from the world as possible and lead a safe, simple life.

I’m reminded of a book my father used to read me,” she said. “A bunch of elves and things get into a huge war over a piece of jewelry that everybody wants but nobody can wear.

If you feel . . . that well-read people are less likely to be evil, and a world full of people sitting quietly with good books in their hands is preferable to world filled with schisms and sirens and other noisy and troublesome things, then every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, 'The world is quiet here,' as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.

An apocryphal story - the word "apocryphal" here means "obviously untrue" - tells of two people, long ago, who were very bored, and that instead of complaining about it they sat up all night and invented the game of chess so that everyone else in the world, on evenings when there is nothing to do, can also be bored by the perplexing and tedious game they invented.

The sad truth is the truth is sad.

A bolt from the blue.

The rinsed foam swirled into one drain that always clogged come October when the maples dropped Canadian propaganda over everything.

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.

I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms.

Thinking about something is like picking up a stone when taking a walk, either while skipping rocks on the beach, for example, or looking for a way to shatter the glass doors of a museum. When you think about something, it adds a bit of weight to your walk, and as you think about more and more things you are liable to feel heavier and heavier, until you are so burdened you cannot take any further steps, and can only sit and stare at the gentle movements of the ocean waves or security guards, thinking too hard bout too many things to do anything else.

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.

Grinning is something you do when you are entertained in some way, such as reading a good book or watching someone you don't care for spill orange soda all over themselves.