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

by Lemony Snicket

Like most restaurants filled with neon lights and balloons, the Anxious Clown served terrible food.

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

But even so, the three children were eager to leave the Anxious Clown, and not just because the garish restaurant—the word “garish” here means “filled with balloons, neon lights, and obnoxious waiters”—was filled with balloons, neon lights, and obnoxious waiters.

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.

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.