"Shouldn't You Be in School?" (All the Wrong Questions, #3)

by Lemony Snicket

The sun was having a tantrum so fierce that all the shade had been scared away,

he was kind and helpful without being irritating or bossy. This sort of person is an endangered species, almost extinct.

You have met impossible people, and you know when you are stuck with them. They are of no more use than a heap of old boxes left in the middle of the sidewalk, but you end up tripping on them anyway.

It is good to see people happy with one another. It is a glimpse of a world in which everyone is that way.

Everyone tells you it’s all right to cry, but not enough people say it’s all right if you don’t want people to know.

You cannot wait for an untroubled world to have an untroubled moment. The terrible phone call, the rainstorm, the sinister knock on the door—they will all come. Soon enough arrive the treacherous villain and the unfair trial and the smoke and the flames of the suspicious fires to burn everything away. In the meantime, it is best to grab what wonderful moments you find lying around.

“People who think nothing can go wrong are usually disappointed.”

I did not want to burden them further. But the treachery of the world will continue no matter how much you worry about it,

“I know you’re perplexed,” I said, “but we must be patient in the face of perplexity.” This was something I had read in a class called Philosophy and Smoked Fish. “It’s like a recipe that doesn’t taste good until the last minute, or a chemical reaction that happens very gradually, or a complicated series of articles in the newspaper that gradually solves a mystery.”

some of the bravest and most resourceful people in the world have come to bad ends.”

If you’re not scared, she told me, it’s not bravery.

Everyone needs a moment on the diving board, before jumping into the depths that wait below.

When you find the sort of people who will show up to give you a ride exactly when they’ve promised to do so, hold on to them for life.

A cranky old woman who makes good doughnuts is better than a cranky old woman who doesn’t.