The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #13)

by Lemony Snicket

But the Baudelaires needed a moral compass, which is something inside a person, in the brain or perhaps in the heart, that tells you the proper thing to do in a given situation.

But it is one of the strange truths of life that practically nobody likes to be stared at and that practically nobody can stop themselves from staring,

the castaways wondered if they really had reached a place that was far from the world’s treachery or if the world’s treachery was just hidden someplace,

the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable. This is a difficult trick, and most people never master it, and end up dead or uncomfortable at least once during their lives.

“Of course I’m trying to trick you!” Olaf cried. “That’s the way of the world, Baudelaires. Everybody runs around with their secrets and their schemes, trying to outwit everyone else.

Thinking about something is like picking up a stone when taking a walk,

When you think about something, it adds a bit of weight to your walk, and as you think about more and more things you are liable to feel heavier and heavier, until you are so burdened you cannot take any further steps, and can only sit and stare at the gentle movements of the ocean waves or security guards, thinking too hard about too many things to do anything else.

Of course, it is quite possible to be in the dark in the dark, as well as to be not in the dark not in the dark, but there are so many secrets in the world that it is likely that you are always in the dark about one thing or another, whether you are in the dark in the dark or in the dark not in the dark, although the sun can go down so quickly that you may be in the dark about being in the dark in the dark, only to look around and find yourself no longer in the dark about being in the dark in the dark,

did not understand how injustice and treachery could prosper, even this far from their home, on an island in the middle of a vast sea, and that happiness and innocence—the happiness and innocence of that day on Briny Beach, before Mr. Poe brought them the dreadful news—could always be so far out of reach.

It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or ceviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.

You’re not keeping anyone safe. You’re endangering the whole world, just to keep a few of your secrets.

“They didn’t want to shelter us from the world’s treacheries. They wanted us to survive them.”

There is a kind of crying I hope you have not experienced, and it is not just crying about something terrible that has happened, but a crying for all of the terrible things that have happened, not just to you but to everyone you know and to everyone you don’t know and even the people you don’t want to know, a crying that cannot be diluted by a brave deed or a kind word, but only by someone holding you as your shoulders shake and your tears run down your face.

“You have to help Kit,” Violet said. “The baby is arriving.” “Kit?” Count Olaf asked, and in one swift gesture he grabbed an apple from the stockpot and took a savage bite. He chewed, wincing in pain, and the Baudelaires listened as his wheezing settled and the poisonous fungus was diluted by their parents’ invention. He took another bite, and another, and then, with a horrible groan, the villain rose to his feet, and the children saw that his chest was soaked with blood. “You’re hurt,” Klaus said.

The night has a thousand eyes,’” Kit said hoarsely, and lifted her head to face the villain. The Baudelaires could tell by her voice that she was reciting the words of someone else. “‘And the day but one; yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one: yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.’”

It is likely your own eyes were closed when you were born, so that you left the safe place of your mother’s womb—or, if you are a seahorse, your father’s yolk sac—and joined the treachery of the world without seeing exactly where you were going. You did not yet know the people who were helping you make your way here, or the people who would shelter you as your life began, when you were even smaller and more delicate and demanding than you are now. It seems strange that you would do such a

thing, and leave yourself in the care of strangers for so long, only gradually opening your eyes to see what all the fuss was about, and yet this is the way nearly everyone comes into the world.

Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes, follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother’s wombs, and then there would be nobody in the worl...

In any case, this is how all our stories begin, ...

our eyes closed, and all our stories end the same way, too, with all of us uttering some last words—or perhaps someone else’s—before slipping back into darkness as our...

While reading and writing, the siblings found many answers for which they had been looking, although each answer, of course, only brought forth another mystery, as there were many details of the Baudelaires’ lives that seemed like a strange, unreadable shape of some great unknown. But this did not concern them as much as you might think.

One cannot spend forever sitting and solving the mysteries of one’s history, and no matter how much one reads, the whole story can

never be told. But it w...

Ô Mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l’ancre! Ce pays nous ennuie, ô Mort! Appareillons! Si le ciel et la mer sont noirs comme de l’encre, Nos coeurs que tu connais sont remplis de rayons!