Most of the laugh tracks on television were recorded in the early 1950’s. These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.

Snow came back, but she didn’t come back right.

What would you think of an engineer who expounded the art of flying without revealing the secrets of the engine and propeller? That’s what you do, you engineer of the human soul. Just that. You’re...

I believe in the salvation of humanity, in the future of cyanide…

Also,” Nick added curtly, “I’m sorry about your face.”Jamie looked over his shoulder, and touched the demon’s mark crawling along his jaw with the back of his hand. “Sorry about saving all our lives by...

Stop that!” Do not mention this when you answer his letter, however. It is quite controversial and Mrs. Mandell is a poet besides.

I suddenly remembered that Murray Gell-Mann and I were supposed to give talks at that conference on the present situation of high-energy physics. My talk was set for the plenary session, so I asked the...

H.L. Mencken once said that Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time. As she looked down at her dead child, Mary Beth realized that the unbearable sense of...

You see, insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.

The taxi driver felt that it was a good observation, and said he was planning to build for the future, too: he had some money on the horses, and if he won, he would buy...

His hatred for all was so intense that it should extinguish the very love from which it was conceived. And thus, he ceased to feel. There was nothing further in which to believe that made...

He quite liked dentists’ waiting rooms. Waiting for dentists was good. Waiting for them was so much better than having them stick metal spikes in your mouth.

The most I can hope for is to die in a pose that confuses future archaeologists.

Princess Cookie’s cognitive pathways may have required a more comprehensive analysis. He knew that it was possible to employ certain progressive methods of neural interface, but he felt somewhat apprehensive about implementing them, for fear...

I’m afraid it’s not nonsense,” Genghis said, shaking his turbaned head and continuing his story. “As I was saying before the little girl interrupted me, the baby didn’t dash off with the other orphans. She...

I could think of no better place to secretly murder someone than inside a fridge. Well, actually there were probably several better ones, but none came to mind at the time.

What’s wrong with you, Daniel? How can you laugh about these things?” And I’m like, ‘Cause crying only gets you halfway there, duh.

The Baudelaire orphans hung on to one another, and wept and wept while the adults argued endlessly behind them. Finally-as, I’m sorry to say, Count Olaf forced the Quagmires into puppy costumes so he could...

This was how I would die. Strangled by an attractive, seminaked woman inside a fridge with a giant tarantula in the middle of a sea of carnivorous jam. As I blacked out, all I could...

Akthent on thee latht thyllable.

Yet you believe those things won’t come if you serve your Lord? You know what they say about the road to Hell, Judas.

Arts degrees are awesome. And they help you find meaning where there is none. And let me assure you, there is none. Don’t go looking for it. Searching for meaning is like searching for a...

… a man doesn’t like to have his ego popped, especially when he prides himself on his sagacity, and then to be proved wrong by a man who claims he doesn’t know anything.

When he picked out the [gravesite] plot, my father had joked that he was moving, at last, to the suburbs.

I don’t know what it is about “magic happens”-stickers on cars but every time I see one I wanna get out my permanent marker and sneak over and write underneath it “so does cot death”.

He could see her planting violets on his grave, a solitary figure in a grey cloak. What a ghastly tragedy. A lump came to his throat. He became quite emotional thinking of his own death....

Al, where are you going to put her? Not in your room. She’d pull a line through you and kill you when you hog the blankets. I’ll take the waif in. I promise I’ll bring...

Well, it was fair when you were sending all the Chinese to Hell who had never heard of Jesus. Wasn’t it?

Neighbours complaining about someone’s dog making an awful racket. You could hardly blame the poor beast, its owner had died in her bed at least a fortnight before and there hadn’t been much left of...

Magic is a naughty beast.

Remember you are never really alone. Although it may feel like it for very long stretches of time.