Top 450 Daniel Handler Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “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

52. “I think pirates, like astronauts, particularly for a boy, are always kind of worth thinking about.”

— Daniel Handler

53. “I always think it’s silly when people talk about works of culture taking risks. Because there’s not any risk involved.”

— Daniel Handler

54. “There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don’t.”

— Daniel Handler

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

— Daniel Handler

56. “Fetching objects for people who are too lazy to fetch them for themselves is never a pleasant task, particularly when the people are insulting you.”

— Daniel Handler

57. “Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course. Piracy, for example, is a tradition that has been carried on for hundreds of years, but that doesn’t mean we should all attack ships and steal their gold.”

— Daniel Handler

58. “For Beatrice – you will always be in my mind, in my heart and in your grave.”

— Daniel Handler

59. “I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday.”

— Daniel Handler

60. “This knowledge sits in my heart, heavy as a paperweight.”

— Daniel Handler

61. “Miracles can happen, even to those who are small, flammable, and dressed all in black.”

— Daniel Handler

62. “I’m happier than a pig eating bacon!”

— Daniel Handler

63. “When do you learn that the world, like any diner worth its salt, is open twenty-four hours a day?”

— Daniel Handler

64. “It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read.”

— Daniel Handler

65. “The way that the stories go in the Snicket books is just the way stories naturally go to me. They’re full of misery, and yet the misery ends up being slightly hilarious. And in terms of the warnings on the back of the books, that really started as an honest assessment of their marketability.”

— Daniel Handler

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

66. “Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother’s wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women.”

— Daniel Handler

67. “Even though there are no ways of knowing for sure, there are ways of knowing for pretty sure.”

— Daniel Handler

68. “Just about everything in this world is easier said than done, with the exception of “systematically assisting Sisyphus’s stealthy, cyst-susceptible sister,” which is easier done than said.”

— Daniel Handler

69. “There is only laughing across the land as the car moves you along, on your way someplace with love in the car.”

— Daniel Handler

70. “All cannot be lost when there is still so much being found.”

— Daniel Handler

71. “For Beatrice, I cherished, you perished, The world’s been nightmarished.”

— Daniel Handler

72. “For Beatrice- When we were together I felt breathless. Now you are.”

— Daniel Handler

73. “The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire.”

— Daniel Handler

74. “I love no one but you, I have discovered, but you are far away and I am here alone.”

— Daniel Handler

75. “For Beatrice, when we first met, I was lonely, and you were pretty. Now I am pretty lonely.”

— Daniel Handler

76. “Unless you have been very, very lucky, you have undoubtedly experienced events in your life that have made you cry. So unless you have been very, very lucky, you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit.”

— Daniel Handler

77. “For Beatrice, when we met, my life began. Soon afterwards, yours ended.”

— Daniel Handler

78. “Dead women tell no tales. Sad men write them down.”

— Daniel Handler

79. “They say love’s like a bus, and if you wait long enough another one will come along, but not in this place where the buses are slow and most of the cute ones are gay.”

— Daniel Handler

80. “You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers. You can invent things like steam-powered window washers. But you can’t invent more time.”

— Daniel Handler

81. “That night was a dark day. Of course, all nights are dark days, because night is simply a badly lit version of day,...”

— Daniel Handler

82. “Wherever it’s good, whatever strange, faraway land, let’s go there, let’s stay in that place alone.”

— Daniel Handler

83. “Temper tantrums, however fun they may be to throw, rarely solve whatever problem is causing them.”

— Daniel Handler

Featured in: Fun Quotes

84. “Death is something you cannot escape, such as death, or a cheesecake that has curdled, both of which always turn up sooner later.”

— Daniel Handler

85. “They say in every library there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind.”

— Daniel Handler

86. “The thing with your heart’s desire is that your heart doesn’t even know what it desires until it turns up.”

— Daniel Handler

87. “Frustration is an interesting emotional state, because it tends to bring out the worst in whoever is frustrated.”

— Daniel Handler

88. “It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.”

— Daniel Handler

89. “The worst surroundings in the world can be tolerated if the people in them are interesting and kind.”

— Daniel Handler

90. “Everything else has vanished, so you take them now. Maybe if you’re the one keeping them, I’ll be the one feeling better.”

— Daniel Handler

91. “Desperation is like a spilled drink; even if it’s delicious, no one will get near it. Cultivate an aura of glamorous unapproachability.”

— Daniel Handler

92. “Love can smack you like a seagull, and pour all over your feet like junkmail. You can’t be ready for such a thing any more than salt water taffy gets you ready for the ocean.”

— Daniel Handler

93. “Accidents happen all the time.”

— Daniel Handler

94. “Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don’t tell them they aren’t. Sit with them and have a drink.”

— Daniel Handler

95. “People don’t always get what they deserve in this world.”

— Daniel Handler

96. “A new experience can be extremely pleasurable, or extremely irritating, or somewhere in between, and you never know until you try it out.”

— Daniel Handler

97. “Tears are curious things, for like earthquakes or puppet shows, they can occur at any time, without any warning and without any good reason.”

— Daniel Handler

98. “The Basic Eight and Watch Your Mouth both have first-person voices, and I ended up investigating those voices and investing so much in them that I think many people took them more seriously than they ought to have.”

— Daniel Handler

99. “It is difficult, when faced with a situation you cannot control, to admit you can do nothing.”

— Daniel Handler

100. “Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is, because you know people who have similar experiences.”

— Daniel Handler