It seemed to me that every adult did something terrible sooner or later. And every child, I thought, sooner or later becomes an adult.
Daniel HandlerIt has been said that the hardest job in the world is raising a child, but the people who says this have probably never worked at a comb factory or captured pirates on the high seas.
Daniel HandlerBut one type of book that practically no one likes to read is a book about the law. Books about the law are notorious for being very long, very dull, and very difficult to read. This is one reason many lawyers make heaps of money. The money is an incentive - the word "incentive" here means "an offered reward to persuade you to do something you don't want to do - to read long, dull, and difficult books.
Daniel HandlerIt turns out she is Canadian, my editor, and so she drinks like a fish. So she wasn't a lightweight at all. And in the morning, she said that the idea still seemed like a good one, and here we are.
Daniel HandlerAn apocryphal story - the word "apocryphal" here means "obviously untrue" - tells of two people, long ago, who were very bored, and that instead of complaining about it they sat up all night and invented the game of chess so that everyone else in the world, on evenings when there is nothing to do, can also be bored by the perplexing and tedious game they invented.
Daniel HandlerI'm not a believer in predetermined fates, being rewarded for one's efforts. I'm not a believer in karma. The reason why I try to be a good person is because I think it's the right thing to do. If I commit fewer bad acts there will be fewer bad acts, maybe other people will join in committing fewer bad acts, and in time there will be fewer and fewer of them.
Daniel Handler