Top 450 Daniel Handler Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Nobody wants to hear that you will try your best. It is the wrong thing to say. It is like saying ‘I probably won’t hit you with a shovel.’ Suddenly everyone is afraid you will do the opposite.”

— Daniel Handler

152. “The expression ‘Those who can’t do, teach’ is a curious one, because if you look at the world, you’ll see that teachers aren’t particularly worse at doing things than anyone else, so perhaps the expression might be better worded as ’nobody can do anything.”

— Daniel Handler

153. “No soy una enamorada, soy una tonta.”

— Daniel Handler

154. “Te quise y ahora te devuelvo tus cosas, las saco de mi vida como a ti...”

— Daniel Handler

Featured in: Romance Quotes

155. “She gave me a hug and for a second I was embraced by a body that makes me want to go home and never eat again.”

— Daniel Handler

156. “Right, good temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

— Daniel Handler

157. “The real Santa Claus is at the mall.”

— Daniel Handler

158. “It is always sad when someone leaves home, unless they are simply going around the corner and will return in a few minutes with ice-cream sandwiches.”

— Daniel Handler

159. “Complimenting someone in an exaggerated way is known as flattery, and flattery will generally get you anything you want...”

— Daniel Handler

160. “Hello, freaky peoples!”

— Daniel Handler

161. “You’re just jealous of me because I’m a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian!”

— Daniel Handler

162. “I’m not a believer in predetermined fates, being rewarded for one’s efforts. I’m not a believer in karma. The reason why I try to be a good person is because I think it’s the right thing to do. If I commit fewer bad acts there will be fewer bad acts, maybe other people will join in committing fewer bad acts, and in time there will be fewer and fewer of them.”

— Daniel Handler

163. “Another song,” Allison says. “The one by that band, from when I was in high school, that saved my life the way songs do.”

— Daniel Handler

164. “If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.”

— Daniel Handler

165. “It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are really right and the person who is really wrong is proving you wrong and proving himself, wrongly, right.”

— Daniel Handler

166. “You know, there’s a big world out there filled with desperate orphans who would gladly swim across an ocean of thumbtacks just to be eclipsed by the long shadow that is cast by my accomplishments.”

— Daniel Handler

167. “Sometimes, just saying that you hate something, and having someone agree with you, can make you feel better about a terrible situation.”

— Daniel Handler

168. “The right boys I always toss and the wrong ones I keep on top of me like paperweights.”

— Daniel Handler

169. “Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.”

— Daniel Handler

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

170. “Olaf: Of course I’m trying to trick you! That’s the way of the world, Baudelaires. Everyone runs around with their secrets and their schemes, trying to outwit everyone else.”

— Daniel Handler

171. “This is my knife. It is very sharp and very eager to hurt you.”

— Daniel Handler

172. “Writing is a dying form. One reads of this every day.”

— Daniel Handler

173. “Oftentimes. when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.”

— Daniel Handler

174. “In the secret pocket, she often kept a small pocket dictionary, which she would take out whenever she encountered a word she did not know.”

— Daniel Handler

175. “Bad circumstances have a way of ruining things that would otherwise be pleasant.”

— Daniel Handler

176. “Announcing your death should be like announcing that you are a lunar moth: It must be done quietly or it will not be believed.”

— Daniel Handler

177. “You might be afraid of the dark, but the dark is not afraid of you. That’s why the dark is always close by.”

— Daniel Handler

178. “Someday we will all be dead people but in the meantime we have these problems to solve.”

— Daniel Handler

179. “This is love, to sit with someone you’ve known forever in a place you’ve been meaning to go, and watching as their life happens to them until you stand up and it’s time to go.”

— Daniel Handler

180. “If you are trying to fool a farsighted or dimwitted person, a veiled facial disguise might be enough.”

— Daniel Handler

181. “When someone is crying, of course, the noble thing to do is to comfort them. But if someone is trying to hide their tears, it may also be noble to pretend you do not notice them.”

— Daniel Handler

182. “It is terribly rude to tell people that their troubles are boring.”

— Daniel Handler

183. “You’d think that sweet would be a land far, far away from irritating, but as it turns out they’re right next door, and always having border disputes.”

— Daniel Handler

184. “One can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”

— Daniel Handler

185. “Beef. Yes. Roast beef. It’s the Swedish term for beef that is roasted.”

— Daniel Handler

186. “There’s information about everything from poetry to pills, from picture frames to pyramids, and from pudding to psychology – and that’s just in the P aisle, which we’re walking down right now.”

— Daniel Handler

187. “When you need a haircut, it looks like you have no one to take care of you.”

— Daniel Handler

188. “You know I want to be a director, but you could never truly see the movies in my head and that, Ed, is why we broke up.”

— Daniel Handler

189. “Figuratively, they escaped from Cout Olaf and their miserable existence. They did not literally escape, because they were still in his house and vulnerable to Olaf’s evil in loco parentis ways.”

— Daniel Handler

190. “Love is candy from a stranger, but it’s candy you’ve had before and it probably won’t kill you.”

— Daniel Handler

191. “Put your hair up, Min. The secret ingredient is not your hair.”

— Daniel Handler

192. “People who say money doesn’t matter are like people who say cake doesn’t matter – it’s probably because they’ve already had a few slices.”

— Daniel Handler

193. “The key to good eavesdropping is not getting caught.”

— Daniel Handler

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

— Daniel Handler

195. “The only thing he cares about.”

— Daniel Handler

196. “Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact.”

— Daniel Handler

197. “Every new promise was like something heavy I had to carry, with no place to put anything down.”

— Daniel Handler

198. “Count Olaf sounds like an awful person. I hope he is torn apart by wild animals someday. Wouldn’t that be satisfying?”

— Daniel Handler

199. “Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.”

— Daniel Handler

200. “It is easy to decide on what is wrong to wear to a party, such as deep-sea diving equipment or a pair of large pillows, but deciding what is right is much trickier.”

— Daniel Handler