I was not a particularly brave child, I think, because I had a narrative mind, because my mind automatically went to any terrible thing that could happen.

Count Olaf certainly does sound evil. Imagine forcing children to stand near a stove!

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.

I'm always loath to make generalizations about what is for children and what isn't. Certainly children's literature as a genre has some restrictions, so certain things will never pop up in a Snicket book. But I didn't know anything about writing for children when I started - this is the theme of naïveté creeping up on us once more - and I sort of still don't, and I'm happy that adults are reading them as well as children.

It seemed to me that every adult did something terrible sooner or later. And every child, I thought, sooner or later becomes an adult.

I can't imagine why you would want to take your child to see what the career of a writer is like, because it mostly consists of sitting in a room typing, or going to the library and looking something up. Those are not exciting things to watch.

Occasionally there are parents who say, "I brought my child so he or she could learn what the career of a writer is like, and you did this long theatrical performance instead, and I'm very disappointed."

A long time ago, there was no such thing as school, and children spent their days learning a trade, a phrase which here means "standing around doing tedious tasks under the instruction of a bossy adult." In time, however, people realized that the children could be allowed to sit, and the first school was invented.

Desperate times call for desperate measures" is an aphorism which here means "sometimes you need to change your facial expression in order to create a workable disguise." The quoting of an aphorism, such as "It takes a village to raise a child," "No news is good news," and "Love conquers all," rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen, which is why we provide our volunteers with a disguise kit in addition to helpful phrases of advice.