821 Quotes by Daniel Handler

Making you happy isn't making me happy

I think books that are meant to be read in the nighttime ought to confront the very fears that we're trying to think about.

Are you ready?" Klaus asked finally. "No," Sunny answered. "Me neither," Violet said, "but if we wait until we're ready we'll be waiting for the rest of our lives, Let's go.

The expression "following suit" is a curious one, because it has nothing to do with walking behind a matching set of clothing. If you follow suit, it means you do the same thing somebody else has just done. If all of your friends decided to jump off a bridge into the icy waters of an ocean or river, for instance, and you jumped in right after them, you would be following suit. You can see why following suit can be a dangerous thing to do, because you could end up drowning simply because somebody else thought of it first.

In America now there is this phenomenon called helicopter parenting, where you're hovering over your child for the whole time. Parents there view their job as being to make sure their kid never has a moment of unhappiness. Of course, as a parent myself, I can understand the urge, but I don't know whether it would be healthy or possible.

I think if I were walking someplace and I saw a corpse my brain would tell me it was a million things before I believed it was a corpse.

I'm jealous of your hooks," Kevin replied. "Having no hands is better than having two equally strong hands." Don't be ridiculous," one of the white-faced women replied. "Having a white face is worse than both of your situations." But you have a white face because you put makeup on," Colette said, as Sunny climbed back out of the trunk and knelt down in the snow. "You're putting powder on your face right now.

Everyone tells you it's all right to cry, but not enough people say it's all right if you don't want people to know.

...and then of course the music sprang up, lousy rock as bold and dull as a giant potato. “Love this song,” Todd said, like it was unusually brave to like what was number one on the radio...