Lemony Snicket · 291 pages
Rating: (3.1K votes)
“It doesn't matter if you never see someone again, I told myself. There are millions of people in the world, and most of them never see each other in the first place. You hoped to know Ellington Feinr forever, but there's no such thing as forever, really. Everything is much shorter than that.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“Villainy can win against one library, but not against an organization of readers.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“There is no point in delaying crying. Sadness is like having a vicious alligator around. You can ignore it for only so long before it begins devouring things and you have to pay attention.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“The world is full of disappointment," I said.
"Yes," she said, "I heard him say that. And every creature is simply trying to get what it wants, and to make their way through a difficult world. Do you believe that?"
"No," I said. "There's more than that."
"Like what?"
"Like good books," I said, "and good people. And good librarians, who are almost both at once.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“Nobody can teach you how to like something. You can like it, or you can pretend to like it, in order to make someone happy.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“Moxie gave me a small smile. "Why do you always say that- which here means?"
"I'll probably outgrow it," I said.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“It doesn't matter if you never see someone again, I told myself. There are millions of people in the world, and most of them never see each other in the first place.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“We'll see what you find out," Stew said. "You'll find out what it feels like to be thrown from a speeding train to the rocky bottom of a drained sea. Except you won't really find out, because you'll be dead. Get it? What I mean is, it'll kill you when I throw you from this train so you'll be in no state to find out what it feels like. Get it? Due to your death by falling from a train.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“Ellington Feint was a line in my mind running right down the middle of my life, separating the formal training of my childhood and the territory of the rest of my days. She was an axis, and at that moment and for many moments afterward, my entire world revolved around her.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“I stood in the corridor feeling like an angry pebble. It didn't matter where I rolled off to. The mystery and treachery of the world continued, and a pebble like me could get angry over anything it liked and it wouldn't do any good. Librarians not reading, I thought to myself. Sometimes I don't know why I bother.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“the treachery of the Inhumane society was controlled by one man. As a brilliant scientist, he could have saved the town, but instead he fed on the loneliness and discontent of the fading town, and pushed people in the direction hw thought was right.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“Good people?” Hangfire repeated. “Are you sure about that, Snicket? Would good people chop down a tree that was hundreds of years old, to erect a statue in honor of bloodshed? Would good people drain the sea, just so they could force ink out of the last few octopi? What do you think happened to the water that drained away? A whole valley was flooded. Countless creatures of Killdeer Fields were drowned, and an entire village was forced to leave their homes, just so the Knight family could add a few pennies to their ink fortune and the town could limp along for a little while longer.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?
“The world is alive with words. The animals, the trees, the grass, and the birds hum with their own words. “Life,” they say. “Air,” they breathe. “Heat,” they hum. The birds call “Fly, fly!” and the leaves wave them onward, uncurling as they whisper “grow, grow.”
― Amy Harmon, quote from The Bird and the Sword
“There’s been a revival of the old debate: with the failure of the wormholes, should we consider redesigning our minds to encompass interstellar distances? One self spanning thousands of stars, not via cloning, but through acceptance of the natural time scale of the lightspeed lag. Millennia passing between mental events. Local contingencies dealt with by non-conscious systems. I don’t think the idea will gain much support, though – and the new astronomical projects are something of an antidote. We can watch the stars from a distance, as ever, but we have to make peace with the fact that we’ve stayed behind.
I keep asking myself, though: where do we go from here? History can’t guide us. Evolution can’t guide us. The C-Z charter says ”understand and respect the universe”… but in what form? On what scale? With what kind of senses, what kind of minds? We can become anything at all – and that space of possible futures dwarfs the galaxy. Can we explore it without losing our way? Fleshers used to spin fantasies about aliens arriving to ”conquer” Earth, to steal their ”precious” physical resources, to wipe them out for fear of ”competition”… as if a species capable of making the journey wouldn’t have had the power, or the wit, or the imagination, to rid itself of obsolete biological imperatives. ”Conquering the galaxy” is what bacteria with spaceships would do – knowing no better, having no choice.
Our condition is the opposite of that: we have no end of choices. That’s why we need to find another space-faring civilisation. Understanding Lacerta is important, the astrophysics of survival is important, but we also need to speak to others who’ve faced the same decisions, and discovered how to live, what to become. We need to understand what it means to inhabit the universe.”
― Greg Egan, quote from Diaspora
“Of course,it had to be just a rebound thing. There was no way I was interested in this arrogant, obnoxious jerk. No matter how hot he might be.”
― Jenna Black, quote from Glimmerglass
“But, the giant wasn’t a god or a demon. He was just a man, very primitive and frightening, yet still just a man. Besides, anyone with a pinch of sense knew women were smarter than men.”
― Julie Garwood, quote from The Wedding
“The physical side of the universe is as a speck of dust compared to the invisible and spiritual part.”
― Eben Alexander, quote from Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife
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