"Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like."
— Lemony Snicket

"People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."
— Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto)

"Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another."
— Lemony Snicket

"Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness."
— Lemony Snicket

"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."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats."
— Lemony Snicket (The Wide Window)

"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."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"A good library will never be too neat or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"I suppose I'll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies."
— Lemony Snicket (The Penultimate Peril)

"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."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"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."
— Lemony Snicket

"If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"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 cling to a plastic duck."
— Lemony Snicket

"It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting."
— Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto)

"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."
— Lemony Snicket (The Carnivorous Carnival)

"Well-read people are less likely to be criminals."
— Lemony Snicket

"No matter who 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."
— Lemony Snicket

"All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk."
— Lemony Snicket

"The moral of Snow White is never eat apples."
— Lemony Snicket

"It is always sad when someone leaves home, unless they are simply going around the corner and will return in a few minutes with ice-cream sandwiches."
— Lemony Snicket

"A passport, as I'm sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between two countries, so that the official can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly."
— Lemony Snicket

"...you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit."
— Lemony Snicket (The Bad Beginning)

"This is my knife. It is very sharp and very eager to hurt you."
— Lemony Snicket (The Reptile Room)

"The sad truth is the truth is sad."
— Lemony Snicket (The Hostile Hospital)

"Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily."
— Lemony Snicket (The Beatrice Letters)

"I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but first impressions are often entirely wrong."
— Lemony Snicket (The Bad Beginning)

"Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women."
— Lemony Snicket

"A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled", describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used. The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn't hear him as he cried for help. Sure enough, that poet is dead."
— Lemony Snicket (The Slippery Slope)

"When some is crying, of course, the noble thing to do is to comfort them. But if someone is trying to hide their tears, it may also be noble to pretend you do not notice them."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"One of the greatest myths in the world - & the phrase 'greatest myths' is just a fancy way of saying 'big fat lies' -- is that troublesome things get less & less troublesome if you do them more & more. People say this myth when they are teaching children to ride bicycles, for instance, as though falling off a bicycle & skinning your knee is less troublesome the fourteenth time you do it than it is the first time. The truth is that troublesome things tend to remain troublesome no matter how many times you do them, & that you should avoid doing them unless they are absolutely urgent."
— Lemony Snicket (The Ersatz Elevator)

"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."
— Lemony Snicket (The Bad Beginning)

"The key to good eavesdropping is not getting caught."
— Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book)

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

"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."
— Lemony Snicket (The Beatrice Letters)

"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."
— Lemony Snicket (The Austere Academy)

"One of the world's most popular entertainments is a deck of cards, which contains thirteen each of four suits, highlighted by kings, queens and jacks, who are possibly the queen's younger, more attractive boyfriends."
— Lemony Snicket

"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."
— Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book)

"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."
— Lemony Snicket (The Wide Window)

"Pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity."
— Lemony Snicket

"Like a church bell, a coffin, and a vat of melted chocolate, a supply closet is rarely a comfortable place to hide."
— Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book)

"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 blood-thirsty 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."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"The world is quiet here."
— Lemony Snicket

"Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so."
— Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book)

"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."
— Lemony Snicket (The Bad Beginning)

"Criminals should be punished, not fed pastries."
— Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book)

"There is nothing particularly wrong with salmon, of course, but like caramel candy, strawberry yogurt, or liquid carpet cleaner, if you eat too much of it you are not going to enjoy your meal."
— Lemony Snicket

"They're book addicts."
— Lemony Snicket (The Miserable Mill)

"But there are times in this harum-scarum world when figuring out the right thing to do is quite simple, but doing the right thing is simply impossible...."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)