Daniel Handler
I write longhand on legal pads, about half at home and half in cafes. I drink a lot of water and eat a lot of raw carrots.Collection: Legal
I write every day weekdays for about 5 hours, mostly longhand on legal pads. It has gotten neither harder nor easier, sadly or happily.Collection: Legal
I didn't like books where people played on a sports team and won a bunch of games, or went to summer camp and had a wonderful time. I really liked a book where a witch might cut a child's head off or a pack of angry dogs might burst through a door and terrorize a family.Collection: Sports
I like to give people novels I think they would like, on no particular occasion - just when we're in a bookstore together. I like to receive reference books on my birthday.Collection: Birthday
Blank paper has always inspired me.
I think books that are meant to be read in the nighttime ought to confront the very fears that we're trying to think about.
If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.
I can't think of a story that doesn't have something terrible in it. Otherwise, it's dull. So when I embarked into the world of picture books, my first thought was to do something about the dark.
When you start writing a picture book, you have to write a manuscript that has enough language to prompt the illustrator to get his or her gears running, but then you end up having to cut it out because you don't want any of the language to be redundant to the pictures that are being drawn.
My first novel took almost six years to sell and was rejected 37 times in the interim, and then finally sold for the smallest amount of money my literary agent had ever negotiated for a work of fiction.
You see failed vocabulary in the adult world so often, and it's often because once you reach a certain age you're kind of embarrassed to go look up a word if you don't know what it means.
I kind of always think my work is unfilmable, and when I meet people who are interested in filming it, I'm always stunned.
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.
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.
I can cook anything.
I listen to Morricone, the famed Italian film composer, while I'm working.
Any playlist without Prince is no friend of mine.
'The Long Goodbye' is one book I like to read over and over again, and it was an enormous inspiration for 'All The Wrong Questions'.
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.
Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby - awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.Collection: Love
the mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart has one:yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.Collection: Love
There are many things in life that become different if you take a long look at them.Collection: Things In Life
Temper tantrums, however fun they may be to throw, rarely solve whatever problem is causing them.Collection: Fun
The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up.Collection: Heart
Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so.Collection: Truth
A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.Collection: Book
They say love's like a bus, and if you wait long enough another one will come along, but not in this place where the buses are slow and most of the cute ones are gay.Collection: Cute
Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course. Piracy, for example, is a tradition that has been carried on for hundreds of years, but that doesn't mean we should all attack ships and steal their gold.Collection: Mean
Sometimes even in most unfortunate of lives there will occur a moment or two of good.Collection: Two
When someone is crying, of course, the noble thing to do is to comfort them. But if someone is trying to hide their tears, it may also be noble to pretend you do not notice them.Collection: Tears
Miracles are like pimples, because once you start looking for them you find more than you ever dreamed you'd see.Collection: Miracle
...everyone was right about you- prove them wrong.Collection: Prove Them Wrong
Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course.Collection: Healing
I'm sure you have heard it said that appearance does not matter so much, and that it is what's on the inside that counts. This is, of course, utter nonsense, because if it were true then people who were good on this inside would would never have to comb their hair or take a bath, and the whole world would smell even worse than it already does.Collection: Hair
Nobody wants to hear that you will try your best. It is the wrong thing to say. It is like saying 'I probably won't hit you with a shovel.' Suddenly everyone is afraid you will do the opposite.Collection: Opposites
I’d ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you, and I did.Collection: Night
the table of elements does not contain one of the most powerful elements that make up our world, and that is the element of surprise.Collection: Powerful
It is always sad when someone leaves home, unless they are simply going around the corner and will return in a few minutes with ice-cream sandwiches.Collection: Home
It is not very polite to interrupt a person, of course, but sometimes if the person is very unpleasant you can hardly stop yourself.Collection: Sometimes
Wishing, like sipping a glass of punch, or pulling aside a bearskin rug in order to access a hidden trapdoor in the floor, is merely a quiet way to spend one's time before the candles are extinguished on one's birthday cake.Collection: Glasses
Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night's sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Morning
Oftentimes. when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.Collection: Sad
The more I protest that I'm not Lemony Snicket, and that I'm Daniel Handler instead, the more it becomes clear to the audience that I am in fact Lemony Snicket, that I am in fact standing in front of them.Collection: Facts
I was once almost forced off the stage at a large chain bookstore that shall remain nameless, because she introduced me as Lemony Snicket, and I immediately interrupted her and said, "Oh no, Lemony Snicket isn't here," and then she tried to cancel the event right then and there.Collection: Events
I can't imagine why you would want to take your child to see what the career of a writer is like, because it mostly consists of sitting in a room typing, or going to the library and looking something up. Those are not exciting things to watch.Collection: Children
I think if I were walking someplace and I saw a corpse my brain would tell me it was a million things before I believed it was a corpse.Collection: Thinking
I always think it's silly when people talk about works of culture taking risks. Because there's not any risk involved.Collection: Silly
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."Collection: Children
The Edith Head Trio, I would say, would be even less of a musical career than playing the accordion, particularly because I played the accordion in The Edith Head Trio. I'm very impressed by your Googling. The Edith Head Trio and another band, Tzamboni, were two bands I was in after college that played at tiny clubs to little acclaim. Our Gypsy tango version of "When Doves Cry" was our biggest hit.But we were not destined for greatness.Collection: Greatness