Shouldn't You Be in School?

You don't spend your life hanging around books without learning a thing or two.

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.

The world is swirling with so many mysteries and secrets that nobody will ever track down all of them. But with a book you can stay up very late, reading until all the secrets are clear to you. The questions of the world are hidden forever, but the answers in a book are hiding in plain sight.

We believe in an aristocracy... Not an aristocracy of power, based on rank or wealth, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Our members are found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between us when we meet... We represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos. We're an invincible army, but not a victorious one. We've had different names throughout history, but all the words that describe us are false and all attempts to organize us fail. Right now we're called V.F.D., but all our schisms and arguments might cause us to disappear. It won't matter. People like us always slip through the net. Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is the wide-open world.

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 have a really terrific library without at least one terrific librarian, the way you cannot have a really terrific bedroom unless you can lock the door.

They were probably hitting the town. I hoped it was hitting them back.

Josephine caught my eye and gave me a signal we'd used for years to indicate that one of us had to leave. The signal was mouthing the words "I have to leave" and pointing at the door.

The trouble with being patient is that eventually you get tired of it.

It is unwise to make something permanent when the whole world is shifting. There may be a time when this symbol means something treacherous and terrible, rather than something noble and literate.

I have a long list of things I’d rather not do.

Hungry people should be fed. It takes some people a long time to figure this out.

Get scared later, and if you're scared now remember what Kit always said. If you're not scared, she told me, it's not bravery. And you want to be brave, don't you, Snicket?

We represent the true human condition, the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos. . . . Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is the wide-open world.

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

It is always better to ask a question than to answer one.

Imagining the worst doesn’t keep it from happening

Hungry licked her spoon and then pointed it at me. 'Aren't you forgetting the dishes?' she asked. 'Absolutely not,' I said. 'I'll remember the dishes as long as I live. See you later, Hungry.

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 dear life.

It’s hard when you’re missing your family. You wake up every morning like someone took one of your legs.

There's no way to tell what will make someone break down in tears. There are some who will cry at the merest melancholy word, and there are some who need the longest, cruelest speech to even dampen one eyelash. There are those who will cry at any sad song but no sad book, and there are those who are immune to the most saddening newspaper articles but will weep for days over a terrible meal. People cry at silence or at violence, in a graveyard or a schoolyard.

Some of the bravest and most resourceful people in the world have come to bad ends

It is the things that have a history, L. Compared to them we are ghosts.

There are some things you cannot explain to anyone, even when they have been explained to you, over and over, almost since the day you were born.

People often forget to look at something right in front of them.

It is good to see people happy with one another. It is a glimpse of a world in which everyone is that way. A happy world might be boring, I told myself, but watching Jake grin at Cleo grinning at Jake grinning at Cleo and back again, I thought it was worth the risk.

If you don't like peas,it is probably because you have not had them fresh.It is the difference between reading a great book and reading the summary on the back

The story of the book filled the car with exciting adventures of the sort that are fun to read about, so we didn’t have to think about the exciting adventures of the sort that are no fun to live through.