Top 450 Daniel Handler Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “There is nothing particularly wrong with salmon, of course, but like caramel candy, strawberry yogurt, or liquid carpet cleaner, if you eat too much of it you are not going to enjoy your meal.”

— Daniel Handler

252. “The last time I saw you, I was trying to throw thumbtacks into your cradle!”

— Daniel Handler

253. “The children of this world and the adults of this world are in entirely separate boats and only drift near each other when we need a ride from someone or when someone needs us to wash our hands.”

— Daniel Handler

254. “If you have ever slept in a covered casserole dish on the highest peak of a mountain range, then you know that it is an uncomfortable place to lay one’s head, even if you find a dish towel inside it that can serve as a blanket.”

— Daniel Handler

255. “I suppose I’ll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies.”

— Daniel Handler

256. “There are some secrets you want to keep to yourself, even if they don’t matter. They might only matter if you keep them secret.”

— Daniel Handler

257. “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

258. “I love meeting people who have absolutely no sense of irony. It’s really fascinating to imagine what it would be like to go through life without understanding even the most basic of ironies.”

— Daniel Handler

259. “Why haven’t we fixed sick yet? You scientists there – put down those starfish and HELP us. I hereby demand that all the people who are good at math make the world free of illness. The rest of us will write you epic poems and staple them together into a booklet.”

— Daniel Handler

260. “A passport, as I’m sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between two countries, so that the official can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly.”

— Daniel Handler

261. “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.””

— Daniel Handler

262. “I hadn’t even been looking, not for you, and now you were my heart’s desire.”

— Daniel Handler

263. “I found powerful the idea that everything we have is, in effect, stolen from everybody else.”

— Daniel Handler

264. “There’s an easy method for finding someone when you hear them scream. First get a clean sheet of paper and a sharp pencil. Then sketch out nine rows of fourteen squares each. Then throw the piece of paper away and find whoever is screaming so you can help them. It is no time to fiddle with paper.”

— Daniel Handler

265. “Having an aura of menace is like having a pet weasel, because you rarely meet someone who has one, and when you do, it makes you want to hide under the coffee table.”

— Daniel Handler

266. “A girl’s bag is an abandoned warehouse. Stupid people in horror movies are the only ones to venture in.”

— Daniel Handler

267. “There was still plenty of water in the basement, and I felt it soaking me from the knees on down. If someone wanted to torture me until I told them a critical piece of information, all they would have to do is get my socks wet. It feels terrible.”

— Daniel Handler

268. “Arguing with somebody is never pleasant, but sometimes it is useful and necessary to do so.”

— Daniel Handler

269. “Here we are at the bottom, almost empty. It’s like confetti, these dried remnants you find in the street for a party no one invited you to. But they used to be, I can admit, part of something beautiful.”

— Daniel Handler

270. “For obvious reasons, I never told you about my notebook, with a cover as green as mansions long ago, which I use as a commonplace book, a phrase which here means ’place where I have collected passages from some of the most important books I have read.”

— Daniel Handler

271. “Sometimes, even the best of plans will occur to you when it is too late.”

— Daniel Handler

272. “It is very easy to say that the important thing is to try your best, but if you are in real trouble the most important thing is not trying your best, but getting to safety.”

— Daniel Handler

273. “I never told you that, even after telling you I love you, all those times all that day, I never told you how beautiful it was then, like everyone was telling us not to be.”

— Daniel Handler

274. “Tartamudear contigo o incluso dejar de tartamudear y no decir nada era tan hermoso y dulce, mejor que hablar a mil por hora con cualquiera.”

— Daniel Handler

275. “But there are times in this harum-scarum world when figuring out the right thing to do is quite simple, but doing the right thing is simply impossible...”

— Daniel Handler

276. “I go to bed early and rise late and feel as if I have hardly slept, probably because I have been reading almost the entire time.”

— Daniel Handler

277. “Chestnuts in stuffing tastes like someone chewed up a tree branch and then French-kissed it into your mouth.”

— Daniel Handler

278. “They’re book addicts.”

— Daniel Handler

279. “You have to love the whole person, if you are truly in love. If you are going to take a lifelong journey with somebody, you can’t mind if the other person believes they are leaving for that journey an hour earlier than you, as long as truly, in the real world, you are both leaving at exactly the same time.”

— Daniel Handler

280. “13. 99 percent is a very large percentage. For instance, easily 99 percent of people want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and the occasional slice of cake for dessert. Surely an arrangement can be made with that niggling 1 percent who disagree.”

— Daniel Handler

281. “I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see.”

— Daniel Handler

282. “I opened my mouth and kissed you then, the first time all night, attacked you and surrendered completely, and let’s get out of here. I’m ready, I’m finished, let’s not break up, no, no. Take me home, my boyfriend, my love.”

— Daniel Handler

283. “A good thing to do when one is sitting, eating, and resting is to have a conversation.”

— Daniel Handler

284. “It looked like something the Hemlock needed, or a piece of equipment a plumber had left behind. It looked like none of your business.”

— Daniel Handler

285. “I was so grateful that Lemony Snicket wasn’t the worst movie ever made that I overlooked many things that might have otherwise upset me.”

— Daniel Handler

286. “A girl meets a boy, Ed, and everything changes, or so she says.”

— Daniel Handler

287. “Sometimes even in most unfortunate of lives there will occur a moment or two of good.”

— Daniel Handler

288. “Make sure you have your own mask on, before helping others with theirs.”

— Daniel Handler

289. “Every night I give a violin recital for six hours, and attendance is mandatory. The word ‘mandatory’ means that if you don’t show up, you have to buy me a large bag of candy and watch me eat it.”

— Daniel Handler

290. “The quoting of an aphorism, like the angry barking of a dog or the smell of overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen.”

— Daniel Handler

291. “Just about everybody has written a first novel that they throw away before writing their actual first novel.”

— Daniel Handler

292. “Of course, it is boring to read about boring thing, but it is better to read something that makes you yawn with boredom than something that will make you weep uncontrollably, pound your fists against the floor, and leave tearstains all over your pillowcase, sheets, and boomerang collection.”

— Daniel Handler

293. “Tell me what it is, or prepare to eat harpoon.”

— Daniel Handler

294. “There is no worse sound in the world than someone who cannot play the violin but insists on doing so anyway.”

— Daniel Handler

295. “Love makes the world go round, the hit songs collectively tell us, and the world is full of people you don’t know and might as well be nice to because they won’t leave.”

— Daniel Handler

296. “One of the world’s most popular entertainments is a deck of cards, which contains thirteen each of four suits, highlighted by kings, queens and jacks, who are possibly the queen’s younger, more attractive boyfriends.”

— Daniel Handler

297. “But just suddenly I really, really needed to see you again right that minute, that night.”

— Daniel Handler

298. “To hear the phrase “our only hope” always makes one anxious, because it means that if the only hope doesn’t work, there is nothing left.”

— Daniel Handler

299. “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.”

— Daniel Handler

300. “December 5 is what I saw as we walked together on October 5, let’s go, let’s go together toward something extraordinary and I started making plans, thinking we would get that far.”

— Daniel Handler