quotes by Lemony Snicket

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

"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 (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Eleventh))

"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

"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

"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

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

"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)

"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 (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Third))

"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)

"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)

"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 troublsome 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 (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Sixth))

"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 (A Series of Unfortunate Events))

"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)

"Pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity"
— Lemony Snicket

"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 (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 1))

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

"There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don't."
— 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 (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Eleventh))

"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 (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Fifth))

""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 (A Series of Unfortunate Events))