“Death is something you cannot escape, such as death, or a cheesecake that has curdled, both of which always turn up sooner later.”
— Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid
“It has been said that the hardest job in the world is raising a child, but the people who says this have probably never worked at a comb factory or captured pirates on the high seas.”
— Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid
“Announcing your death should be like announcing that you are a lunar moth: It must be done quietly or it will not be believed.”
— Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid
“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.”
— Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid
“Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some blood-thirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself.”
— Lemony Snicket
“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”
— Lemony Snicket
“Normally it is not polite to go into somebody’s room without knocking, but you can make an exception if the person is dead, or pretending to be dead.”
— Lemony Snicket
