We Are Pirates Quotes

“We steal the happiness of others in order to be happy ourselves, and when it is stolen from us we voyage desperately to steal it back.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“He who wants the world must first escape from it.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“Treat reluctance like seasickness," Errol said, picking something off his sleeve. "If you feel it, focus on the horizon.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“Phil Needle supposed what he meant was that he wanted to be God, just long enough to find his daughter. It was not a prayer but a promotion. This was why nobody liked God: they wanted his job.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“It's okay to like jerks. I mean, it'd be better to like a nice guy, but there aren't any.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“He told her then how sorry he was for last night, but not out loud.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“When you're at sea," Gwen would probably reply, "it's not food. It's fuel, for further exploits."
"So the exploit fuels the next exploit, and the next the next, and so on? Is there nothing more, nothing else?"
"Is there ever?”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“One narrative, about the hated people in our lands, is that eventually they get what is coming to them.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“I guess it's funny how life turns out?" she tried. "Not last I checked," Errol said with a snort.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“Phil Needle stood in the parking lot, suddenly grasping that this was so, that nothing is lost in a world utterly mapped, that nothing is rogue with everything cross-pollinated, as the shouts on the beach lured him across the street to the sand.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“History is written by the winners”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“It is the presumed mission of all women, a quest for a man, and no amount of bloodshed can dissuade the myth. For a boy, people would say to her soon, in disbelief or even in admiration, and they would be all wrong.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“Gwen was determined to screw it up, but had not yet seen how.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“Anybody might get drunk at the first intrrview.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“Gwen didn't have to ask about the Fall. It happened to all old people, the Fall. They fell and then everything changed[...]They fell and never quite got up again.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“Maybe," Gwen said, instead of yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“The idea was women on boats. Lifeline Cruises pitched itself to women seeking adventure, whether a daylong adventure in the waters of the San Francisco Bay or a twelve-day adventure from San Francisco to Alaska and back. Passengers did not have to be survivors of breast cancer or domestic abuse, nor was any of the profit of Lifeline Cruises given to such causes, but the language of its radio ads, slippery and clear, managed to convey that this might be so. 'Empowerment' was one of the words. It's daylong cruise boat was named The Wild Lady, from a poem by Emily Dickinson that Lifeline Cruises had made up. Tote bags sold on board broadcast the words of the ad—

The wild lady may seem—
adrift to those who cannot dream—
but within her uncharted wand'ring eyes—
a heart beats healthy, strong and wise!

—and below this were the words 'Emily Dickinson.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“Marina leaned her head against him and sniffled. It was common in this day and age, when waiting someplace, to look around at your involuntary companions and imagine you were trapped with them someplace more dire: a hostage situation or a building on fire, something requiring teamwork and survival. Could you build the camaraderie promised in movies about such times, or would you fall apart? Phil Needle looked around and realized, quietly but sharply, that he and his wife would not survive this. Gwen's disappearance would slaughter them.
YOU WANT IT WHEN? was the caption on the poster. It was talking about office work, and the sad fact, true at the time, that people want things right away and that other people don't care about that. The poster reminded people that it didn't matter what you wanted. Where was she? Where did somebody put her? Where were those ragged thumbs of hers, and her odd, tiny earlobes? Was he about to become one of those guys, clutching a photograph of Gwen, on the news every year in support of an extreme new crime law? Were they becoming one of those families used as a murmured example of the wickedness of the world, as a worst-case scenario to comfort those whose daughter was merely pregnant or paralyzed? Would there be a funeral, everyone sweating in black clothes in the summer and squinting in sunglasses? Oh God, would there be a hasty peer-group shrine, wherever she was found, with cheap flowers and crappy poetry melting in the rain? Would her college fund sit forgotten for a while in the bank, like a tumor thought benign, and then be emptied impulsively on some toy to cheer himself up? He had seen in a magazine a handsome automobile some months ago, shiny as clean water.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates