There is no worse sound in the world than someone who cannot play the violin but insists on doing so anyway.
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.
It made the Baudelaire sisters a little sad to see all those books sitting in the library unread and unnoticed, like stray dogs or lost children that nobody wanted to take home.
One of the greatest myths in the world – and the phrase ‘greatest myths is just a fancy way of saying ‘big fat lies’ – is that troublesome things get less and less troublesome if you do them more and more.
Of course you can trust me,” Jake Hix said. “We read the same books.
Nevermore Tree was gargantuan, a word which here means ’having attained an inordinate amount of botanical volume.
The passageway was still as dark as a bar of extra-dark chocolate sitting in a planetarium covered in a thick, black blanket.
There have been only five burglars in the history of robbery who have specialized in rope. All five of these burglars were caught and sent to prison, which is why scarcely any people lock up their rope for safekeeping.
In the vast majority of cases, however, getting into trouble has nothing to do with one’s self-esteem. It usually has much more to do with whatever is causing the trouble – a monster, a bus driver, a banana peel, killer bees, the school principal – than what you think of yourself.
Sunny did not eat the wood, of course, but she chewed on it and pretended it was a carrot, or an apple, or a beef and cheese enchilada, all of which she loved.
It was confusing pretending to be completely different people, particularly because it had been so long since the Baudelaires were able to be the people they really were.
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 to readjust the way you thought of things.
They were charming and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair.
As I’m sure you know, to be in one’s own room, in one’s own bed, can often make a bleak situation a little better.
She hadn’t told Klaus about her plan, because she didn’t want to give him false hope, so without waking him, she gathered up her grappling hook and tiptoed out of her room.
Although this table contains a great many elements, from the element oxygen, which is found in the air, to the element aluminum, which is found in cans of soda, the table if elements does not contain one of the most powerful elements that make up our world, and that is the element if surprise.
Never trust anyone without a book.
We’ve discovered a way to dilute.
Behind these two booths was an enormous roller coaster, a phrase which here mean ’a series of small carts where people can sit and race up and down steep and frightening hills of tracks, for no discernible reason.
The moral of “The Three Bears,” for instance, is “Never break into someone else’s house.” The moral of “Snow White” is “Never eat apples.” The moral of World War One is “Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.
Klaus had not told his siblings about the book, because he didn’t want to give them false hope.