Daniel Handler: Thing

Daniel Handler is American novelist, children's writer, creator of Lemony Snicket. Explore interesting quotes on thing.
Daniel Handler: 380   quotes 9   likes

“No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read. For instance, if you are walking in the mountains, and you don't read the sign that says "Beware of Cliff" because you were busy reading a joke book instead, you may suddenly find yourself walking on air rather than on a sturdy bed of rocks. If you are baking a pie for your friends, and you read an article entitled "How to Build a Chair" instead of a cookbook, your pie will probably end up tasting like wood and nails instead of like crust and fruity filling. And if you insist on reading this book instead of something more cheerful, you will most certainly find yourself moaning in despair instead of wriggling with delight, so if you have any sense at all you will put this book down and pick up another one. I know of a book, for instance, called The Littlest Elf, which tells the story of a teensy-weensy little man who scurries around fairyland having all sorts of adorable adventures, and you can see at once that you should probably read The Littlest Elf and wriggle over the lovely things that happened to this imaginary creature in a made-up place, instead of reading this book and moaning over the terrible things that have happened to the three Baudelaire orphans.”

Daniel Handler book The Vile Village

Lemony Snicket
The Vile Village (2001)

Love , People , Books , Mountain

“Stop saying no offense,” I said, “when you say offensive things. It’s not a free pass.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

“The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Heart

“Undeveloped, the whole thing, tossed into a box before we really had a chance to know what we had, and that's why we broke up.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Chance , Box

“It is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes; it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs (2006), Truly
Context: If you follow the diamond in my mother's ring from Africa to Germany to California to Arizona to Wisconsin, in the heel of a grandmother, in the beak of a magpie, in the gravel of the path, in someone else's novel, in the center of the earth where the volcanoes are from, you would forget the miracle, the reason diamonds end up in people's fingers in the first place. it is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes, it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.

Love , People , Way , Bird

“who would dare think that, forever? Some idiot girl who wouldn’t know how things played out.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Girl , Thinking

“I want to love you and take you pretty places. Yes, I have things wrong, but also I can walk through walls if you'll let me show you.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

Love

“The whole thing of what I’ve been trying,” you said, “is that you’re different, and you keep asking about the other girls, but what I mean is that I don’t think about them, because of the way you are.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Way , Girl , Thinking

“… that's not why we broke up. I love it, I miss it, I hate to give it back to you, this complicated thing, it's why we stayed together”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Love , Hate

“Love can smack you like a seagull, and pour all over your feet like junkmail. You can't be ready for such a thing any more than salt water taffy gets you ready for the ocean.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs (2006), Collectively

Love , Water

“But there was more, as there always is when the love goes. She was haunted, naturally. Otherwise what is the point, why leave your rickety house, and why this yo-yo world giving us things and yanking them back?”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

Love , World , Nature , Housing

“People aren't either wicked or noble," the hook-handed man said. They're like chef's salad, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”

Daniel Handler book The Grim Grotto

The Grim Grotto (2004)

People

“In this large and fierce world of ours, there are many, many unpleasant places to be. You can be in a river swarming with angry electric eels, or in a supermarket filled with vicious long-distance runners. You can be in a hotel that has no room service, or you can be lost in a forest that is slowly filling up with water. You can be in a hornet's nest or in an abandoned airport or the office of a pediatric surgeon, but one of the most unpleasant things that can happen is to find yourself in a quandary.”

Daniel Handler book The Vile Village

Lemony Snicket
The Vile Village (2001)

World , Water

“Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make--bombs for instance, or strawberry shortcake--if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see how this can lead to terrible trouble. For instance, one morning you might wake up and make the assumption that your bed was in the same place that it always was, even though you would have no real evidence that this was so. But when you got out of your bed, you might discover that it has floated out to sea, and now you would be in terrible trouble all because of the incorrect assumption that you'd made. You can see that it is better not to make too many assumptions, particularly in the morning.”

Daniel Handler book The Austere Academy

The Austere Academy (2000)

Way , Sea

“Why do so many things end in fire?”

Daniel Handler

Lemony Snicket
Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography (2002)

“Standing ten feet away from Lila was sort of kickass with her nails drumming on the box with the slot in, where we put everything that we rip in half, and with her blue-eyed beauty and with the gum she was chewing and how lovely she was, in that way that makes you want to find something else lovely just so you can give it to her and see how really kickass it is to have to lovely things next to each other.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Obviously

Love , Beauty , Way , Box

“My stepfather said that the amount of treachery in this world is enormous, and that the best we could do was one small noble thing.”

Daniel Handler book The Grim Grotto

Fiona
The Grim Grotto (2004)

World

“It was the sort of day when people walk in the park and solve problems. "We'll simply call the taxi company, David, and request a large one, like one of those vans." Is the sort of thing you would overhear if you were overhearing in the park.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Naturally

People , Problem

“"I know" Helena said and this is another example of why behave this way? Things just poured out of her mouth lately, like vomit, and sometimes it actually was.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Not Particularly

Way

“One of the most troublesome things in life is that what you do or do not want has very little to do with what does or does not happen.”

Daniel Handler book The Carnivorous Carnival

Lemony Snicket
The Carnivorous Carnival (2002)

Life