The Reptile Room Quotes

“This is my knife. It is very sharp and very eager to hurt you.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“Waiting is one of life’s hardships.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“For Beatrice--My love for you shall live forever. You, however, did not.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try to readjust the way you thought of things. The Baudelaire orphans were crying not only for their Uncle Monty, but for their own parents, and this dark and curious feeling of falling that accompanies every great loss.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“Right, good temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“Simply put, dramatic irony is when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning. For instance, if you were in a restaurant and said out loud, "I can't wait to eat the veal marsala I ordered," and there were people around who knew that the veal marsala was poisoned and that you would die as soon as you took a bite, your situation would be one of dramatic irony.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“There are two types of panicking: standing still and not saying a word, and leaping all over the place babbling anything that comes into your head.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“...in life it is often the tiny details that end up being the most important.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“What happens in a certain place can stain your feelings for that location, just as ink can stain a white sheet.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“Sometimes, even in the most unfortunate of lives, there will occur a moment or two of good fortune.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“How did you do that?” Mr. Poe asked. “Nice girls shouldn’t know how to do such things.”
“My sister is a nice girl,” Klaus said, “and she knows how to do all sorts of things.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“This is an absurd moral, for you and I both know that sometimes not only is it good to lie, it is necessary to lie.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“It is remarkable that different people will have different thoughts when they look at the same thing.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“Goodness! Golly! Good God! Blessed Allah! Zeus and Hera! Mary and Joseph! Nathaniel Hawthorne! Don't touch her! Grab her! Move closer! Run away! Don't move! Kill the snake! Leave it alone! Give it some food! Don't let it bite her! Lure the snake away! Here, snakey! Here, snakey snakey!”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“Life is a conundrum of esoterica.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“Never, under any circumstances, let the Virginian wolfsnake near a typewriter.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“I think we'll always miss our parents. But I think we can miss them without being miserable all the time. After all, they wouldn't want us to be miserable.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“If you know somebody very well, like your grandmother or your baby sister, you will know when they are real and when they are fake.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“Klaus sighed, and opened a book, and as at so many other times when the middle Baudelaire child did not want to think about his circumstances, he began to read.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“This feeling is not unlike the sinking in one's stomach when one is in an elevator that suddenly goes down, or when you are snug in your bed and your closet door suddenly creaks open to reveal the person who has been hiding there.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“Count Olaf sounds like an awful person. I hope he is torn apart by wild animals someday. Wouldn't that be satisfying?”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“There is a pair of snakes who have learned to drive a car so recklessly that they would run you over in the street and never stop to apologize.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“Even the best plans can change if there's an accident.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“If only Uncle Monty knew what we know," Violet said, "and Stephano knew that he knew what we know. But Uncle Monty doesn't know what we know, and Stephano knows that he doesn't know what we know."
"I know," Klause said.
"I know you know," Violet said”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“When somebody is a little bit wrong - say, when a waited puts nonfat milk in your espresso macchiato, instead of lowfat milk - it is often quite easy to explain to them how and why they are wrong. But if somebody is surprisingly wrong - say, when a waiter bites your nose instead of taking your order - you can often be so surprised that you are unable to say anything at all. Paralyzed by how wrong the waiter is, your moth would hang slightly open and your eyes would blink over and over, but you would be unable to say a word.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“Waiting is one of life's hardships. It is hard enough to wait for chocolate cream pie while burnt roast beef is still on your plate. It is plenty difficult to wait for Halloween when the tedious month of September is still ahead of you. But to wait for one's adopted uncle to come home while a greedy and violent man is upstairs was one of the worst waits the Baudelaires had ever experienced.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“We all know, of course, that we should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever fiddle around in any way with electric devices. Never.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“It is, as you know, very, very rude and usually unnecessary to use profanity.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room

“What should we call him?" Klaus asked.
"You should call him Dr. Montgomery," Mr. Poe replied, "unless he tells you to call him Montgomery. Both his first and last names are Montgomery, so it doesn't make much difference."
"His name is Montgomery Montgomery?" Klaus said, smiling.
"Yes, and I'm sure he's very sensitive about that, so don't ridicule him," Mr. Poe said, coughing again into his handkerchief.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Reptile Room