Daniel Handler Quotes

Anyone who gives you a cinnamon roll fresh out of the oven is a friend for life.

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.

Temper tantrums, however fun they may be to throw, rarely solve whatever problem is causing them.

One's home is like a delicious piece of pie you order in a restaurant on a country road one cozy evening - the best piece of pie you have ever eaten in your life - and can never find again. After you leave home, you may find yourself feeling homesick, even if you have a new home that has nicer wallpaper and a more efficient dishwasher than the home in which you grew up.

At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.

Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is, because you know people who have similar experiences.

I didn't realize this was a sad occasion.

They didn't understand it, but like so many unfortunate events in life, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so.

Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby - awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.

People worry more about girls, for a good reason: I don't think my parents thought I was going to be raped by a classmate or attacked when I was walking alone in some neighborhood. So it's not just paranoid parents.

Chestnuts in stuffing tastes like someone chewed up a tree branch and then French-kissed it into your mouth.

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.

Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.

The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up.

Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you'd see.

Accidents happen all the time.

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.

They say love's like a bus, and if you wait long enough another one will come along, but not in this place where the buses are slow and most of the cute ones are gay.

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

Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night's sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too.

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.

If we wait until we're ready, we'll be waiting for the rest of our lives.

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.

I stand entwined in fire on the inextinguishable bonfire of inconceivable love.

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.

Oftentimes. when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.

If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.

The Violins waltzed. The Cellos and Basses provided accompaniment. The Violas mourned their fate, while the Concertmaster showed off. The Flutes did bird imitations…repeatedly, and the reed instruments had the good taste to admire my jacket. The Trumpets held a parade in honor of our great nation, while the French Horns waxed nostalgic about something or other. The Trombones had too much to drink. The Percussion beat the band, and the Tuba stayed home playing cards with his landlady, the Harp, taking sips of warm milk a blue little cup. “But the Composer is still dead.

the mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart has one:yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.

Here we are at the bottom, almost empty. It's like confetti, these dried remnants you find in the street for a party no one invited you to. But they used to be, I can admit, part of something beautiful.

Every last souvenir of the love we had, the prizes & the debris of this relationship, like the glitter in the gutter when the parade has passed, all the everything & whatnot kicked to the curb.

Wishing, like sipping a glass of punch, or pulling aside a bearskin rug in order to access a hidden trapdoor in the floor, is merely a quiet way to spend one's time before the candles are extinguished on one's birthday cake.

They looked at each other like a pair of parentheses.

Make sure you have your own mask on, before helping others with theirs.

One can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.

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

I love no one but you, I have discovered, but you are far away and I am here alone. Then this is my life and maybe, however unlikely, I'll find my way back there. Or maybe, one day, I'll settle for second best. And on that same day, hell will freeze over, the sun will burn out and the stars will fall from the sky.

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.

He looked like the sort of person who would tell you that he did not have an umbrella to lend you when he actually had several and simply wanted to see you get soaked.

I’d ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you, and I did.

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

Sometimes the things you’ve lost can be found again in unexpected places.

I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but first impressions are often entirely wrong.

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.

If I were to say, "Yes, I am a fascinating, erudite person," what would that say about me? I don't know.

You’re just jealous of me because I’m a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian!

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.

There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don't.

The key to good eavesdropping is not getting caught.