Top 450 Daniel Handler Quotes (2023 Update)
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251. “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

252. “If you have ever had a miserable experience, then you have probably had it said to you that you would feel better in the morning. This, of course, is utter nonsense, because a miserable experience remains a miserable experience even on the loveliest of morning.”

— Daniel Handler

253. “The smell of cooking food is often a calming one.”

— Daniel Handler

254. “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

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

— Daniel Handler

256. “They’re book addicts.”

— Daniel Handler

257. “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

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

— Daniel Handler

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

— Daniel Handler

260. “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

261. “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

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

— Daniel Handler

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

— Daniel Handler

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

— Daniel Handler

265. “When you say, “History is written by the winners,” you like to think about someone who isn’t you. You want to think, “Oh, that’s the juggernaut I’m standing against.” But you’re probably part of it.”

— Daniel Handler

266. “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

267. “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

268. “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

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

— Daniel Handler

270. “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

271. “A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.”

— Daniel Handler

272. “Just because something is typed-whether it is typed on a business card or typed in a newspaper or book-this does not mean that it is true.”

— Daniel Handler

273. “One cannot spend forever sitting and solving the mysteries of oone’s history.”

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

— Daniel Handler

276. “Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.”

— Daniel Handler

277. “Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you’d see.”

— Daniel Handler

278. “You would run much slower if you were dragging something behind you, like a knapsack or a sheriff.”

— Daniel Handler

279. “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

280. “No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don’t read is often as important as what you do read.”

— Daniel Handler

281. “There are almost as many kinds of libraries as there are kinds of readers.”

— Daniel Handler

282. “I am so tired, I can hardly type these worfs.”

— Daniel Handler

283. “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

284. “Members of your family might say they are working hard all day long, while you are off at school or clarinet lessons, but the only way to know this for sure is to follow them at a discreet distance.”

— Daniel Handler

285. “It is often said that reading is a gift, but to my mind that is an insufficient description, for the size of the gift of reading is so vast that it is difficult to see what is outside its wrapping.”

— Daniel Handler

286. “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

287. “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

288. “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

289. “So she loved him. She just did immediately and again often and clearly naturally and soundly and obviously and many others.”

— Daniel Handler

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

— Daniel Handler

291. “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

292. “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

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

— Daniel Handler

294. “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

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

— Daniel Handler

296. “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

297. “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

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

— Daniel Handler

299. “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

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

— Daniel Handler