The Wide Window (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #3)

by Lemony Snicket

Mr. Poe was kindhearted, but it is not enough in this world to be kindhearted, particularly if you are responsible for keeping children out of danger.

There was a clothing store called Look! It Fits!,

Grammar is the greatest joy in life, don’t you find?”

The Baudelaires thought of grammar—all those rules about how to write and speak the English language—the way they thought of banana bread: fine, but nothing to make a fuss about.

as if the Baudelaires were riding on some horrible bus that stopped only at stations of unfairness and misery.

“I want to complain, anyway,” he said.

“My dear husband and I never had children,” she said, “because we were afraid to. But I do want you to know that I’m very happy that you’re here. I am often very lonely up on this hill by myself, and when Mr. Poe wrote to me about your troubles I didn’t want you to be as lonely as I was when I lost my dear Ike.”

“Swoh!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant something along the lines of “Why in the world would you go swimming in a lake full of leeches?”

Being afraid of a monster under the bed is perfectly rational, because there may in fact be a monster under your bed at any time, ready to eat you all up,

if you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, “Well, at least I’m not being eaten by a bear.” You can see at once why keeping things in perspective rarely works very well, because it is hard to concentrate on somebody else being eaten by a bear when you are staring at your own ugly pimple.

“I would be happy to have the acquaintance of a local personage,” Count Olaf said, tipping his blue sailor hat and using a silly word which here means “person.”

“Ging!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant something like “I would rather eat dirt.”

futile, a word which here means “filled with futility.”

“I will thank you not to be impertinent,” Aunt Josephine said, using a word which here means “pointing out that I’m wrong, which annoys me.”

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

Tears are curious things, for like earthquakes or puppet shows they can occur at any time, without any warning and without any good reason.

He was not very good at comforting people, but he put his arms around the children the best he could, and murmured “There, there,” which is a phrase some people murmur to comfort other people despite the fact that it doesn’t really mean anything.

I am sitting in my room, in the middle of the night, writing down this story and looking out my window at the graveyard behind my home.

“You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers. You can invent things like steam-powered window washers. But you can’t invent more time.”

“Welcome to the Anxious Clown restaurant—where everybody has a good time, whether they like it or not.

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

There are few sights sadder than a ruined book, but Klaus had no time to be sad.

A library is normally a very good place to work in the afternoon, but not if its window has been smashed and there is a hurricane approaching.

Klaus thought of a book on the Franco-Prussian War that was so difficult that he had hidden it so as not to be reminded that he wasn’t old enough to read it. And Sunny thought of a piece of stone that was too hard for even her sharpest tooth, and how she had hidden it so her jaw would no longer ache from her many attempts at conquering it.

I have seen a woman I loved picked up by an enormous eagle and flown to its high mountain nest.

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 might be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.

Brobdingnagian—a

the word “phantasmagorical” here means “all the creepy, scary words you can think of put together”—place.

The Lachrymose Leeches made a quiet, whispering sound on the water as they swam, as if the Baudelaire orphans were surrounded by people murmuring terrible secrets.

“It’s miraculous!” Klaus cried, as the flame took hold. “It’s unbelievable!” Aunt Josephine cried. “Fonti!” Sunny shrieked. “It’s the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light!” Violet cried,

But despite all of Aunt Josephine’s faults, the orphans still cared about her. She had taught them many things, even if most of them were boring. She had provided a home, even if it was cold and unable to withstand hurricanes. And the children knew that Aunt Josephine, like the Baudelaires themselves, had experienced some terrible things in her life.

Alexander the Great lived more than two thousand years ago, and his last name was not actually “The Great.” “The Great” was something that he forced people to call him, by bringing a bunch of soldiers into their land and proclaiming himself king.

The moral of “The Three Bears,” for instance, is “Never break into someone else’s house.” The moral of “Snow White” is “Never eat apples.” The moral of World War One is “Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.”

They leaned up against one another appreciatively, and small smiles appeared on their damp and anxious faces. They had each other. I’m not sure that “The Baudelaires had each other” is the moral of this story, but to the three siblings it was enough. To have each other in the midst of their unfortunate lives felt like having a sailboat in the middle of a hurricane, and to the Baudelaire orphans this felt very fortunate indeed.