If you have ever slept in a covered casserole dish on the highest peak of a mountain range, then you know that it is an uncomfortable place to lay one's head, even if you find a dish towel inside it that can serve as a blanket.

Count Olaf certainly does sound evil. Imagine forcing children to stand near a stove!

The trick to following someone without getting caught is to follow somebody who doesn't think they're being followed.

Sometimes words are not enough. There are some circumstances so utterly wretched that I cannot describe them in sentences or paragraphs or even a whole series of books.

It is difficult, when faced with a situation you cannot control, to admit you can do nothing.

To stutter through it with you or even stop stuttering and say nothing, was so lucky and soft, better talk than mile-a-minute with anyone. After a few minutes we’d stop rattling, we’d adjust, we’d settle in, and the conversation would speed into the night.

Chestnuts in stuffing tastes like someone chewed up a tree branch and then French-kissed it into your mouth.