“People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“Having a personal philosophy is like having a pet marmoset, because it may be very attractive when you acquire it, but there may be situations when it will not come in handy at all.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“Of course, it is boring to read about boring thing, but it is better to read something that makes you yawn with boredom than something that will make you weep uncontrollably, pound your fists against the floor, and leave tearstains all over your pillowcase, sheets, and boomerang collection.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“How can someone so wonderful do something so terrible?”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“A successful villain should have all these things at his or her villainous fingertips, or else give up villainy altogether and try to lead a life of decency, integrity, and kindness, which is much more challenging and noble, if not always quite as exciting.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“I’m happier than a pig eating bacon!”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“You’re just jealous of me because I’m a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian!”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“The last time I saw you, I was trying to throw thumbtacks into your cradle!”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“When you think of me," she said quietly "think of a food you love very much.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“It is my fate that some of my questions will never be answered.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“I guess we’ll be traveling in uncharted waters.”
“That’ll be fun,” Phil said.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“Or why you are wearing a picture of Santa Clause on you shirts, but-”
“It’s Herman Melville.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches. And you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“Let’s see! I’ll put you to work right away! Aye! No—first I’ll give you a tour! No—I’ll introduce you to my crew! No—I’ll let you rest! No—I’d better get you into uniforms! Aye! It’s important that everyone aboard wear a waterproof uniform in case the submarine collapses and we find ourselves underwater! Of course, in that case we’ll need diving helmets! Except Sunny because she can’t wear one! I guess she’ll drown! No—she can curl up inside a diving helmet! Aye! The helmets have a tiny door on the neck just for such purpose! Aye! I’ve seen it done! I’ve seen so many things in my time!”
“Excuse me,” Violet said, “but could you tell us who you are?”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“Hup hup ha ha hammy hee hee!”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“Dessert is the most important meal of the day!”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“lately is has become more and more difficult to attend dinner parties without the evening ending in gunfire or tapioca...”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“It is awful to contemplate this sort of life, in which one would always be forced into motion by a variety of mysterious and powerful forces, never staying anywhere for long, never finding a safe place one could call home, never able to turn the tables for very long, just as the Baudelaire orphans found it awful to contemplate their own lives [...] just when it seemed they might break out of the tedious cycle of unfortunate events in which they found themselves trapped.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“A short woman might be difficult to see on a crowded city street, particularly if she has disguised herself as a mailbox, and people keep putting letters in her mouth.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“Count Olaf: You should have given up a long time ago, orphans. I triumphed the moment you lost your family.
Violet: We didn't lose our family. Only our parents.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“… and the Baudelaire orphans climbed aboard, turning the tables of their lives and breaking their unfortunate cycle for the very first time.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“Reading poetry, even if you are only reading it to find a secret message hidden within its words, can often give one a feeling of power the way you can feel powerful if you are the only one who brought an umbrella on a rainy day, of the only one who knows how to untie knots when you're taken hostage.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“There is nothing wicked about having a dreadful singing voice, any more than there is something wicked about having dreadful posture, dreadful cousins, or a dreadful pair of pants. Many noble and pleasant people have any number of these things, and there are even one or two kind individuals who have them all. But if you have something dreadful, and you force it upon someone else, then you have done something quite wicked indeed.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“But there are things that are difficult to see not because of the size of their surroundings, or a clever disguise, or a treacherous person with a book of matches in his pocket and a fiendish plot in his brain, but because the things are so upsetting to look at, so distressing to believe, that it is as if your eyes refuse to see what is right in front of them.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“You might think that climbing a mountain is half the battle, only to find out that the mountain goats who live at the top are vicious, and heavily armed.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“All of life is just shadows.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
“How does anyone know anything about anything? I read it, of course!”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto
Lemony Snicket
Born place: in San Francisco, The United States
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“Outside the window, there slides past that unimaginable and deserted vastness where night is coming on, the sun declining in ghastly blood-streaked splendour like a public execution across, it would seem, half a continent, where live only bears and shooting stars and the wolves who lap congealing ice from water that holds within it the entire sky. All white with snow as if under dustsheets, as if laid away eternally as soon as brought back from the shop, never to be used or touched. Horrors! And, as on a cyclorama, this unnatural spectacle rolls past at twenty-odd miles an hour in a tidy frame of lace curtains only a little the worse for soot and drapes of a heavy velvet of dark, dusty blue.”
― Angela Carter, quote from Nights at the Circus
“Kane: So, what should I do?
Helen: Are you looking for another slap on the head? Hook up that wonderful connection you now have with your mate. Go find her, explain how you feel and then have some great make-up sex!”
― Nicky Charles, quote from The Mating
“You never knelt to get anywhere. You are where you are because you're fucking capable, and willing to risk everything to do right, and I'll never be half what you are even if I tried my whole life, and I was walking around thinking I was better than you, even half dead and no use to anyone, because my family is old, because I was born better.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Justice
“I don't have all the pieces to fix this beautiful, trapped, broken man, but I do have one piece and it's mine to give. For one night, for all nights. For however long he wants it. Me. Completely.”
― K.A. Tucker, quote from One Tiny Lie
“To have children is to plant roses, muguets, lavender, lilac, gardenia, stock, peonies, tuberose, hyacinth ...it is to achieve a whole sense,a grand sense one did not priorly know. It is to give one's garden another dimension. Perfume of life itself.”
― Julia Glass, quote from Three Junes
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The Apple Tart of Ho...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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