Top 450 Daniel Handler Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “He who hesitates is lost.”

— Daniel Handler

2. “Morning is an important time of day, because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have.”

— Daniel Handler

Featured in: Good Morning Quotes, Important Quotes

3. “If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives.”

— Daniel Handler

4. “When things don’t go right, go left.”

— Daniel Handler

5. “Every problem has a solution. Sometimes it just takes a long time to find the solution – even if it’s right in front of your nose.”

— Daniel Handler

6. “Do the scary thing first, and get scared later.”

— Daniel Handler

7. “At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. and what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.”

— Daniel Handler

8. “The world is quiet here.”

— Daniel Handler

9. “Sometimes words are not enough.”

— Daniel Handler

10. “Don’t repeat yourself. It’s not only repetitive, it’s redundant, and people have heard it before.”

— Daniel Handler

11. “Sometimes the things you’ve lost can be found again in unexpected places.”

— Daniel Handler

12. “I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but first impressions are often entirely wrong.”

— Daniel Handler

13. “A mystery is solved with a story.”

— Daniel Handler

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

14. “Sometimes words are not enough. There are some circumstances so utterly wretched that I cannot describe them in sentences or paragraphs or even a whole series of books.”

— Daniel Handler

15. “It is a lonely feeling when someone you care about becomes a stranger.”

— Daniel Handler

16. “A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.”

— Daniel Handler

17. “But I must admit I miss you terribly. The world is too quiet without you nearby.”

— Daniel Handler

18. “It is my fate that some of my questions will never be answered.”

— Daniel Handler

19. “If everyone fought fire with fire, the whole world would go up in smoke.”

— Daniel Handler

20. “In love, as in life, one misheard word can be tremendously important. If you tell someone you love them, for instance, you must be absolutely certain that they have replied “I love you back” and not “I love your back” before you continue the conversation.”

— Daniel Handler

21. “For Beatrice, summer without you is as cold as winter. Winter without you, is even colder.”

— Daniel Handler

22. “Keep anyone with whom you can read in silence.”

— Daniel Handler

23. “No reality has the power to dispel a dream.”

— Daniel Handler

24. “Anyone who thinks the pen is mightier than the sword has not been stabbed with both.”

— Daniel Handler

25. “For Beatrice, our love broke my heart, and stopped yours.”

— Daniel Handler

26. “There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many types of people, and everybody wants to read something different.”

— Daniel Handler

27. “Your initial opinion on just about anything may change over time.”

— Daniel Handler

28. “It was darker than a pitch-black panther, covered in tar, eating black licorice at the very bottom of the deepest part of the Black Sea.”

— Daniel Handler

29. “Appearance matters a great deal because you can often tell a lot about people by looking at how they present themselves.”

— Daniel Handler

30. “Anyone who gives you a cinnamon roll fresh out of the oven is a friend for life.”

— Daniel Handler

31. “It was a curious feeling, that something could be so close and so distant at the same time.”

— Daniel Handler

32. “Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it isn’t so.”

— Daniel Handler

33. “Grief, a type of sadness that most often occurs when you have lost someone you love, is a sneaky thing, because it can disappear for a long time, and then pop back up when you least expect it.”

— Daniel Handler

34. “I’m telling you why we broke up, Ed. I’m writing this letter, the whole truth of why it happened. And the truth is that I goddamn loved you so much.”

— Daniel Handler

35. “Grammar is the greatest joy in life, don’t you find?”

— Daniel Handler

36. “I stand entwined in fire on the inextinguishable bonfire of inconceivable love.”

— Daniel Handler

37. “Knowing that something is wrong and doing it anyway happens very often in life, and I doubt I will ever know why.”

— Daniel Handler

38. “Labor Day is a holiday honoring those who work for a living. Laborious Day is a lesser known holiday honoring those who cannot stop talking about their work.”

— Daniel Handler

39. “I was stupid, the official descriptive phrase for happy.”

— Daniel Handler

40. “In times of extreme stress, one can often find energy hidden in even the most exhausted areas of the body.”

— Daniel Handler

41. “Life never end when you are in it.”

— Daniel Handler

42. “We are all told to ignore bullies. It’s something they teach you, and they can teach you anything. It doesn’t mean you learn it. It doesn’t mean you believe it. One should never ignore bullies. One should stop them.”

— Daniel Handler

43. “There is no easy way to train an apprentice. My two tools are example and nagging.”

— Daniel Handler

44. “Literature doesn’t exactly have a strong mental-health track record.”

— Daniel Handler

Featured in: Strong Quotes

45. “Someone can break your heart, leave you dead on the lawn, and still you never learn what to say to stop it all over again.”

— Daniel Handler

46. “I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.”

— Daniel Handler

47. “Every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, “The world is quiet here,” as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.”

— Daniel Handler

Featured in: Reading Quotes

48. “Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make – bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake – if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble.”

— Daniel Handler

49. “When trouble strikes, head to the library. You will either be able to solve the problem, or simply have something to read as the world crashes down around you.”

— Daniel Handler

50. “The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done.”

— Daniel Handler