Top 450 Daniel Handler Quotes (2023 Update)
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301. “There is no worse sound in the world than someone who cannot play the violin but insists on doing so anyway.”

— Daniel Handler

302. “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

303. “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

304. “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

305. “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

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

— Daniel Handler

307. “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

308. “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

309. “I’m alone. There’s a poem in that, but I don’t want to write it. I don’t want to be someone who spends Saturday night alone at home, writing poems about being alone.”

— Daniel Handler

310. “I find reading screenplays difficult, as they’re only a roadmap for what a movie might end up being.”

— Daniel Handler

311. “This world is suchier than we are, and the best thing to do is keep moving and find your keys.”

— Daniel Handler

312. “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

313. “They say that when you’re really in love, the world becomes gossamer and gorgeous, but in my experience the world gets grimy, and the love object is in stark relief from the surroundings. This is love, a pretty thing on an ugly street.”

— Daniel Handler

314. “The hallway was lined with numbered doors, odd numbers on one side and even numbers on the other, and large ornamental vases, too large to hold flowers and too small to hold spies.”

— Daniel Handler

315. “I like writing for movies. It’s nice to be alone working on fiction in your room, and then it’s nice to be in a room with a bunch of people working on a movie.”

— Daniel Handler

316. “I was never a fan of anything, and yet some people are fans of my books. That’s a bit odd. But I like meeting them.”

— Daniel Handler

317. “I thought it was one thing but it was the other, it was zero zero zero alone on the bus while you slept in the room I had to leave, and that’s why we broke up.”

— Daniel Handler

318. “The library was one enormous room, with long, high metal shelves and the perfect quiet that libraries provide for anyone looking for an answer.”

— Daniel Handler

319. “Shyness is a curious thing, because, like quicksand, it can strike people at any time, and also, like quicksand, it usually makes its victims look down.”

— Daniel Handler

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

— Daniel Handler

321. “She didn’t look like a girl who would ruin the whole thing at all.”

— Daniel Handler

322. “Forever and ever, world without end.”

— Daniel Handler

323. “If you enjoy books with happy endings than you are better off reading some other book.”

— Daniel Handler

324. “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

325. “Are you who I think you are?”

— Daniel Handler

326. “I have a dream of what would have happened if what happened instead hadn’t.”

— Daniel Handler

327. “She was all the world’s money, and I would spend it with her, my sharpest friend who changed the tide, my only comfort from the brutal gamble of the world and the wicked ways of men.”

— Daniel Handler

328. “And then like a song we’d forgotten was even on the mix, you stepped into the house and my whole life.”

— Daniel Handler

329. “It is one of life’s bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting.”

— Daniel Handler

330. “Once more, this is love: it rings and you open up unless it looks like an ax murderer.”

— Daniel Handler

331. “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

332. “There are many difficult things in this world to hide, but a secret is not one of them.”

— Daniel Handler

333. “Instead of the word ‘love’ there was an enormous heart, a symbol sometimes used by people who have trouble figuring out the difference between words and shapes.”

— Daniel Handler

334. “All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk.”

— Daniel Handler

335. “If you have ever lost a loved one, then you know exactly how it feels. And if you have not, then you cannot possibly imagine it.”

— Daniel Handler

336. “I think one of the reasons it ended was that his eyes never lit up for me the way they did for classical music. I realize that in the long run I may not be as wonderful as a Brahms symphony but I think I’m good for a Haydn quintet.”

— Daniel Handler

337. “I’ve never had a musical career. So I think it’s been unaffected. I play the accordion. In terms of thinking of it as a musical career, I think it’s sort of like calling yourself an astronaut because you have a shiny suit.”

— Daniel Handler

338. “My chauffer once told me that I would feel better in the morning, but when I woke up the two of us were still on a tiny island surrounded by man-eating crocodiles, and, as I’m sure you can understand, I didn’t feel any better about it.”

— Daniel Handler

339. “You should never stick something that you are allergic to into your mouth, especially if that thing is cats.”

— Daniel Handler

340. “One of the remarkable things about love is that, despite very irritating people writing poems and songs about how pleasant it is, it really is quite pleasant.”

— Daniel Handler

341. “I’m always interested to see what films are made of books. I kind of don’t participate as a filmgoer in any kind of debate about what’s better, the book or the movie. So I think it’s interesting when people want to do it.”

— Daniel Handler

342. “Right now I have the suspicion that the ace of diamonds is trapped forever, face down, beneath the king of diamonds, which is sneering at me like Juror Number Five, and my whole life feels like a similar misshuffle.”

— Daniel Handler

343. “I’m a lunatic wandering around for scraps.”

— Daniel Handler

344. “When I wrote Rick, I had the idea that I would take the plot of nearly every opera and turn it into a dark film, which is something I still may do.”

— Daniel Handler

345. “You know, despite all my world-weariness and cynicism, I think I’ve always believed that there is one person in the universe for whom you are truly meant – and the fact that sometimes there are two or even more people on the earth you can fall in love with really bothers me. It suggests that if you work hard you can be meant for anyone.”

— Daniel Handler

346. “Wherever there’s a conductor, you’re sure to find a dead composer!”

— Daniel Handler

347. “Everyone tells you it’s all right to cry, but not enough people say it’s all right if you don’t want people to know.”

— Daniel Handler

348. “Troublesome things tend to remain troublesome no matter how many times you do them.”

— Daniel Handler

349. “Any playlist without Prince is no friend of mine.”

— Daniel Handler

350. “Take back the smile and the night, take it all back, I wish I could.”

— Daniel Handler