"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)

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

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

"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)

"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)

"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

"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

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

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

"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

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

"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)

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

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

"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)

"Right, good temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."
— Lemony Snicket (The Reptile Room)

"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

"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

"A successful villain should have all these things at his or her villainous fingertips, or else give up villainy altogether and try to lead a life of decency, integrity, and kindness, which is much more challenging and noble, if not always quite as exciting."
— Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto)

"People don't always get what they deserve in this world."
— Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book)

"Beef. Yes. Roast beef. It's the Swedish term for beef that is roasted."
— Lemony Snicket

"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs"
— Charlotte Brontë

"...the shadows are as important as the light..."
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"'I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.' -Jane Eyre"
— Charlotte Brontë

"We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us. ~Jane Eyre"
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitments, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into it's expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst it's perils.
- Jane Eyre"
— Charlotte Brontë

"'I must, then, repeat continually that we are forever sundered - and yet, while I breathe and think, I must love him.'

- Jane Eyre"
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

""I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustainted I am, the more I will respect myself."

- Jane Eyre {Jane Eyre}"
— Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)

"I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant."
— Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)

"Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they are."
— Markus Zusak (I Am the Messenger)

"The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you."
— Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)

"Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of."
— Markus Zusak (I Am the Messenger)

"I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right."
— Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)

"She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Leisel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist's suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers...She did not say goodbye. She was incapable, and after a few more minutes at his side, she was able to tear herself from the ground. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on..."
— Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)

"It kills me sometimes, how people die."
— Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)

"She said it out loud, the words distributed into a room that was full of cold air and books. Books everywhere! Each wall was armed with overcrowded yet immaculate shelving. It was barely possible to see paintwork. There were all different styles and sizes of lettering on the spines of the black, the red, the gray, the every-colored books. It was one of the most beautiful things Liesel Meminger had ever seen.

With wonder, she smiled.

That such a room existed!"
— Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)

"I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it."
— Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)

"Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always."
— Khaled Hosseini

"A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated..."
— Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Splendid Suns)

"Miriam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Miriam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate belongings."
— Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Splendid Suns)

"Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."
— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

"At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived."
— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

"She was gone, and all that was left was the space you'd grown around her, like a tree that grows around a fence. For a long time, it remained hollow. Years, maybe. And when at last it was filled again, you knew that the new love you felt for a woman would have been impossible without Alma. If it weren't for her, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it."
— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

"Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together."
— Nicole Krauss

"'If I had a camera,' I said, 'I'd take a picture of you every day. That way I'd remember how you looked every single day of your life.'"
— Nicole Krauss

"And if the man who once upon a time had been a boy who promised he'd never fall in love with another girl as long as he lived kept his promise, it wasn't because he was stubborn or even loyal. He couldn't help it."
— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

"The truth is the thing I invented so I could live."
— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

"I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one."
— Nicole Krauss