Quotes from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“They say in every library there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“Don’t repeat yourself. It’s not only repetitive, it’s redundant, and people have heard it before.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“There's an easy method for finding someone when you hear them scream. First get a clean sheet of paper and a sharp pencil. Then sketch out nine rows of fourteen squares each. Then throw the piece of paper away and find whoever is screaming so you can help them. It is no time to fiddle with paper.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“Knowing that something is wrong and doing it anyway happens very often in life, and I doubt I will ever know why.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“You may be right,' she said, a phrase which here meant 'I’m wrong, but I don’t have the courage to say so.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“I’m reminded of a book my father used to read me,” she said. “A bunch of elves and things get into a huge war over a piece of jewelry that everybody wants but nobody can wear.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“A mystery is solved with a story.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“The children of this world and the adults of this world are in entirely separate boats and only drift near each other when we need a ride from someone or when someone needs us to wash our hands.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“So you’re reluctant, I said to myself. Many, many people are reluctant. It’s like having feet. It’s nothing to brag about.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“Scolding must be very, very fun, otherwise children would be allowed to do it. It is not because children don’t have what it takes to scold. You need only three things, really. You need time, to think up scolding things to say. You need effort, to put these scolding things in a good order, so that the scolding can be more and more insulting to the person being scolded. And you need chutzpah, which is a word for the sort of show-offy courage it takes to stand in front of someone and give them a good scolding, particularly if they are exhausted and sore and not in the mood to hear it.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“Every new promise was like something heavy I had to carry, with no place to put anything down.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. It is good to brush your teeth when you are angry, because you brush harder and do a better job.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“There was something I was always very good at, however, and that was teaching myself not to be frightened while frightening things are going on. It is difficult to do this, but I had learned. It is simply a matter of putting one’s fear aside, like the vegetable on the plate you don’t want to touch until all of your rice and chicken are gone, and getting frightened later, when one is out of danger. Sometimes I imagine I will be frightened for the rest of my life because of all of the fear I put aside during my time in Stain’d-by-the-Sea.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“There are two good reasons to put your napkin in your lap. One is that food might spill in your lap, and it is better to stain the napkin than your clothing. The other is that it can serve as a perfect hiding place. Practically nobody is nosey enough to take the napkin off a lap to see what is hidden there.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“The library was one enormous room, with long, high metal shelves and the perfect quiet that libraries provide for anyone looking for an answer.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“I thought maybe if I stared hard enough, I could see the lights of the city I had left so very far behind. This was nonsense, of course, but there's nothing wrong with occasionally staring out the window and thinking nonsense, as long as the nonsense is yours.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“You must be all a-tingle with excitement.'
'I guess so,' I said, but I did not feel a-tingle. I did not feel a-anything.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“Nothing firms up a friendship like a good-natured argument.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“I do what I do," I said, "in order to do something else.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“The map is not the territory.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“It is always terrible to be told to go play with people one doesn’t know...”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“Stretched out in front of me was my time as an adult, and then a skeleton, and then nothing except perhaps a few books on a few shelves.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“But the world did not match the picture in my head, and instead I was with a strange, uncombed person, overlooking a sea without water and a forest without trees.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“There is no easy way to train an apprentice. My two tools are example and nagging.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“It felt like the wrong thing to do, standing at the wrong door in the wrong place. We did it anyway. Knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway happens very often in life, and I doubt I will eer know why.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“They were almond cookies, although they could have been made of spinach and shoes for all I cared. I ate eleven of them, right in a row. It is rude to take the last cookie.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“It looked like something the Hemlock needed, or a piece of equipment a plumber had left behind. It looked like none of your business.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“There was still plenty of water in the basement, and I felt it soaking me from the knees on down. If someone wanted to torture me until I told them a critical piece of information, all they would have to do is get my socks wet. It feels terrible.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“Various parts of my body told me that in the future they would appreciate it if I slept lying down on a bed instead of sitting at the counter of Black Cat Coffee. I quietly reassured them that this was an unusual situation, and had the machinery make me some bread as a breakfast.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

“Aha!"

My chaperone looked at me like I should aha! back, but all I could manage was a quiet "ah." I made a note to ha later.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Who Could That Be at This Hour?

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“You take a straight tip from the stable, Cokey, if you must hate, hate the government or the people or the sea or men, but don't hate an individual person. Who's done you a real injury. Next thing you know he'll be getting into your beer like prussic acid; and blotting out your eyes like a cataract and screaming in your ears like a brain tumour and boiling round your heart like melted lead and ramping though your guts like a cancer. And a nice fool you'd look if he knew. It would make him laugh till his teeth dropped out; from old age.”
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“I noticed you made a bee-line for their bookcases." It is the oldest and most incorrigible trait of the book-lover.”
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“Granny Trill and Granny Wallon were traditional ancients of a kind we won’t see today, the last of that dignity of grandmothers to whom age was its own embellishment. The grandmothers of those days dressed for the part in that curious but endearing uniform which is now known to us only through music-hall. And our two old neighbours, when setting forth on errands, always prepared themselves scrupulously so. They wore high laced boots and long muslin dresses, beaded chokers and candlewick shawls, crowned by tall poke bonnets tied with trailing ribbons and smothered with inky sequins. They looked like starlings, flecked with jet, and they walked in a tinkle of darkness.

Those severe and similar old bodies enthralled me when they dressed that way. When I finally became King (I used to think) I would command a parade of grandmas, and drill them, and march them up and down - rank upon rank of hobbling boots, nodding bonnets, flying shawls, and furious chewing faces. They would be gathered from all the towns and villages and brought to my palace in wagon-loads. No more than a monarch’s whim, of course, like eating cocoa or drinking jellies; but far more spectacular any day than those usual trudging guardsmen.”
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“Margaret thought of all she knew for certain, that day would always follow night that love was never wasted nor was it lost.”
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“Oh, for the sin of Satan.”
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