Quotes from The Reptile Room

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who are you?" Violet asked. It is confusing to fall asleep in the daytime and wake up at night.

"what are you doing with Uncle Monty's reptiles?" Klaus asked. It is also confusing to realize you have been sleeping on stairs, rather than in a bed or sleeping bag.

"Dixnik?" Sunny asked. It is always confusing why anyone would choose to wear a plaid shirt.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from 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, quote from The Reptile Room

“I have gone into town to buy a few last things we need for the expedition: Peruvian wasp repellent, toothbrushes, canned peaches, and a fireproof canoe. It will take a while to find the peaches, so don't expect me back until dinnertime.
Stephano, Gustav's replacement, will arrive today by taxi. Please make him feel welcome. As you know, it is only two days until the expedition, so please work very hard today.
Your giddy uncle,
Monty”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Reptile Room

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

About the author

Popular quotes

“Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, quote from House of Leaves

“Walking and talking - that seemed a very odd way of spending an afternoon.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited

“The redness was going out of the light now, the remains of the day were a fading pink, the color of wild roses.”
― Stephen King, quote from Hearts in Atlantis

“Il y avait des hommes si ambitieux qu'ils auraient torché les chefs, pour les entendre seulement dire merci.”
― Émile Zola, quote from Germinal

“You sold us out, Clark. You gave them the power that should have been ours. Just like your parents taught you. My parents taught me a different lesson... lying on this street... shaking in deep shock... dying for no reason at all. They showed me that the world only makes sense when you force it to.”
― Frank Miller, quote from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.