Quotes from The Beatrice Letters

Lemony Snicket ·  72 pages

Rating: (7.8K votes)


“Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“I go to bed early and rise late and feel as if I have hardly slept, probably because I have been reading almost the entire time.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters



“But I must admit I miss you terribly. The world is too quiet without you nearby.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fettuccini and ats the horseradish loves the miyagi, and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness of the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written.

I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp... I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close... I will love you until your face is fogged by distant memory. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, I will love you if you don't marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else--and i will love you if you never marry at all, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all. That is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“Everything. A letter may be coded, and a word may be coded. A theatrical performance may be coded, and a sonnet may be coded, and there are times when it seems the entire world is in code. Some believe that the world can be decoded by performing research in a library. Others believe that the world can be decoded by reading a newspaper. In my case, the only thing that made sense of the world was you, and without you the world will seem as garbled and tragic as a malfunctioning typewrit9.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“Life never end when you are in it.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters



“I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“but it's far too late for us; ring, hair, letters, photographs--all traces of our love will be scattered then, like an anagram...”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world's cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess. I will love you no matter how many fire drills we are all forced to endure, and no matter what is drawn upon the blackboard in blurry, boring chalk. I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. I will love you no matter how your soccer team performed in the tournament or how many stains I received on my cheerleading uniform. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“With you away, it is as if all the letters in my life are scrambled into an anagram, and I will not be able to put all the letters in order and make sense of anything until you return. I never want to be apart from you again, Beatrice, except in the restroom, at work, and when one of us is at a movie that the other does not want to see.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“It takes years for the land to recuperate from a fire, but even in the darkest of ashes eventually something can grow.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters



“I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before than, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar marks the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table.I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavour of naval uniforms. I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“...Hoping for the best, like hoping for a bat to obey your orders, almost always leads to disappointment.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“...Some of the simplest things in like are the most difficult to imagine.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“No matter what documents you investigate, and what objects you retrieve, you many never answer the questions that are most important to you, but nevertheless, sooner or later you must finish whatever file you have begun.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters



“I will love you as a cufflink loves to drop from its shirt and explore the party for itself.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


“I will love you as an oven loves malfunctioning in the middle of roasting a turkey.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Beatrice Letters


About the author

Lemony Snicket
Born place: in San Francisco, The United States
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