My silence knot is tied up in my hair; as if to keep my love out of my eyes. I cannot speak to one for whom i care. A hatpin serves as part of my disguise. In the play, my role is baticeer; a word which here means “person who trains bats.” The audience may...

It is very useful, when one is young, to learn the difference between “literally” and “figuratively.” If something happens literally, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively, it feels like it is happening. If you are literally jumping for joy, for instance, it means you are leaping in the air because you are very happy....

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

What do your parents know, about surviving?

I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.

You write poetry?” Klaus asked.He had read a lot about poets but had never met one.”Just a little bit,” Isadora said modestly. “I write poems down in this notebook. It’s an interest of mine.””Sappho!” Sunny shrieked, which meant something like, “I’d be very pleased to hear a poem of yours!

The difference between a house and a home is like the difference between a man and a woman– it might be embarrassing to explain, but it would be very unusual to get them confused.

Miracles are like meatballs, because nobody can exactly agree on what they are made of, where they come from, or how often they should appear. Some people say that a sunrise is a miracle, because it is somewhat mysterious and often very beautiful, but other people say it is simply a fact of life, because...

If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf.

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...

All his life, Klaus had believed that if you read enough books, you could solve any problem, but now he wasn’t so sure.

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.

Well, Nero,” Genghis said, “I just wanted to give you this rose-a small gift of congratulations for the wonderful concert you gave us last night!””Oh, thank you,” Nero said, taking the rose out of Genghis’s hand and giving it a good smell. “I was wonderful, wasn’t I?””You were perfection!” Genghis said. “The first time you...

Seguro que sabéis que cuando uno está en su propia habitación, en su propia cama, una situación triste puede mejorar un poco

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….

One of the greatest myths in the world – & the phrase ‘greatest myths’ is just a fancy way of saying ‘big fat lies’ — is that troublesome things get less & less troublesome if you do them more & more. People say this myth when they are teaching children to ride bicycles, for instance,...

What a schmuck!

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

There’s no way to tell what will make someone break down in tears. There are some who will cry at the merest melancholy word, and there are some who need the longest, cruelest speech to even dampen one eyelash. There are those who will cry at any sad song but no sad book, and there...

We are respecting our parents’ wishes….They didn’t want to shelter us from the world’s treacheries. They wanted us to survive them.

Algunas veces, sólo decir que odias algo y que alguien esté de acuerdo contigo puede hacer que te sientas mejor, a pesar de lo terrible de la situación.

The sky was dark blue twilight, pretty to look at but lonely to walk under.

Literature doesn’t exactly have a strong mental-health track record.

Get scared later, and if you’re scared now remember what Kit always said. If you’re not scared, she told me, it’s not bravery. And you want to be brave, don’t you, Snicket?

Money is like a child—rarely unaccompanied. When it disappears, look to those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it while you were at the grocery store. You might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around, with long, suspicious explanations for how they got there.

If you were smart,” Genghis said, “you would have borrowed the silverware of one of your friends.””We never thought of that,” Klaus said. When one is forced to tell atrocious lies, one often feels a guilty flutter in one’s stomach, and Klaus felt such a flutter now. “You certainly are an intelligent man.””Not only am...

Wicked people never have time for reading. It’s one of the reasons for their wickedness.

The French expression ‘cul-de-sac’ describes what the Baudelaire orphans found when they reached the end of the dark hallway, and like all French expressions, it is most easily understood when you translate each French word into English. The word ‘de,’ for instance is a very common French world, I would be certain that ‘de’ means...

It is always better to ask a question than to answer one.

If you are a student you should always get a good nights sleep unless you have come to the good part of your book, and then you should stay up all night and let your schoolwork fall by the wayside, a phrase which means ‘flunk’.

It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus, and even Sunny felt in the time that followed. If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven’t, you cannot possibly imagine it.

Just knowing that they could read made the Baudelaire orphans feel as if their wretched lives could be a little brighter.

There are some people who believe that home is where one hangs one’s hat, but these people tend to live in closets and on little pegs.

If the Baudelaire orphans had been stalks of celery, they would not have been small children in great distress, and if they had been lucky, Carmelita Spats would have not approached their table at this particular moment and delivered another unfortunate message. “Hello, you cakesniffers,” she said, “although judging from the baby brat you’re more...

El olor de comida cocinándose es a menudo relajante.

I think everyone’s parents have secrets. You just have to know where to look for them.

Pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity.

I am so tired, I can hardly type these worfs.

The world is quiet here.

If you’re not scared, she told me, it’s not bravery.

Simply put, dramatic irony is when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning. For instance, if you were in a restaurant and said out loud, “I can’t wait to eat the veal marsala I ordered,” and there...

Es muy útil, cuando uno es joven, aprender la diferencia entre «literal» y «figurado». Si algo ocurre de forma literal, ocurre realmente; si algo ocurre de forma figurada, es como si estuviese ocurriendo. Si tú estás literalmente volando de alegría, por ejemplo, significa que estás saltando en el aire porque te sientes muy contento. Si,...

…you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit.

People aren’t either wicked or noble. They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.

…she was so afraid of everything that she made it impossible to really enjoy anything at all.

Nobody wants to fall into a safety net, because it means the structure in which they’ve been living is in a state of collapse and they have no choice but to tumble downwards. However, it beats the alternative.

Yes, I know,” Isadora said, and then read her poem, leaning forward so Carmelita Spats would not overhear:”I would rather eat a bowl of vampire batsthan spend an hour with Carmelita Spats.”The Baudelaires giggled and then covered their mouths so nobody would know they were laughing at Carmelita.”That was great,” Klaus said. “I like the...

Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another.

The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding–which is the term for the stitching and glue that holds the...

If an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say in a pleasant and hopeful voice, “Well this isn’t too bad, I don’t have a left arm anymore but at least nobody will ever ask me if I’m left-handed or right-handed,” but most of us would say something more along...