With any word, there are subconscious associations, which simply means that certain words make you think of certain things, even if you don’t want to.
It was another thing you didn’t learn at a top-drawer school. Bickering is like baldness or lousy gifts. It runs in families.
Sometimes things can go on right in front of your nose, but you don’t know about them.
Mr. Poe opened his mouth to say something, but erupted into a brief fit of coughing. “I have made arrangements,” he said finally, “for you to be raised by a distant relative of yours who lives on the other side of town. His name is Count Olaf.
I said that if she won I would tell all of you something I learned about her this summer. Jackie Woodson is allergic to watermelon. Just let that sink in your minds. I said, ‘You have to put that in a book.’ And she said, ‘You put that in a book.’ And I said, ‘I’m only writing a book about a black girl who’s allergic to watermelon if you, Cornel West, Toni Morrison and Barack Obama say, ‘This guy’s OK.
The curious thing about being told to sleep on it – a phrase which here means, as I’m sure you know, ‘to go to bed thinking about something and reach a conclusion in the morning’ – is that you usually can’t. If you are thinking over a dilemma, you are likely to toss and turn all night long, thinking over terrible things that can happen and trying to imagine what in the world you can do about it, and these circumstances are unlikely to result in any sleeping at all.
But I will take a page from the book of the Snow Scout leader, and skip ahead to the next interesting thing that happened, which was very, very late at night, when so many interesting parts of stories happen and so many people miss them because they are asleep in their beds, or hiding in the broom closet of a mustard factory, disguised as a dustpan to fool the night watchwoman. It.
The first sentence was “This tome will endeavor to scrutinize, in quasi-inclusive breadth, the epistemology of ophthalmologically contrived appraisals of ocular systems and the subsequent and requisite exertions imperative for expugnation of injurious states,” and as Violet read it out loud to her sister, both children felt the dread that comes when you begin a very boring and difficult book.
Wretchedness. It is atrociously unfair, of course, that the Baudelaires have so many troubles, but that is the way the story goes. So now that I’ve told you that the first sentence will be “The Baudelaire.
Count Olaf were watching them even when he wasn’t nearby.
How does anyone know anything about anything? I read it, of course!
I had a list of ways I would prefer to die. Drowning was toward the bottom of the list. My top choice was “never.
The expression “following suit” is a curious one, because it has nothing to do with walking behind a matching set of clothing.
The phrase ‘for naught’ is simply a fancy way of saying ‘for nothing,’ and it doesn’t matter which phrase you use, for they are both equally difficult to admit.
Ike always loved the sunshine, and I like to imagine that wherever he is now, it’s as sunny as can be. Of course, nobody knows what happens to you after you die, but it’s nice to think of my husband someplace very, very hot, don’t you think?
The two Baudelaires, of course, had no idea what the hospital’s policy was concerning surgical paperwork, but they were beginning to see that the crowd would believe just about anything if they thought it was being said by a medical professional.
Where are the books? All these elegant bookshelves are empty.
It was a puzzle, a dark and lonely one, and if I were a piece in this puzzle, I did not know where it belonged. I needed to put myself aside, just for a little while, until I saw where I might fit in.
We don’t need a destination or a way of navigating, because we’ll go wherever it takes us.
One could say, in fact, that no story really has a beginning, and that no story really has an end.