It is a miracle if you can find true friends, and it is a miracle if you have enough food to eat, and it is a miracle if you get to spend your days and evenings doing whatever it is you like to do, and the holiday season - like all the other seasons - is a good time not only to tell stories of miracles, but to think about the miracles in your own life, and to be grateful for them, and that's the end of this particular story.

It was darker than a pitch-black panther, covered in tar, eating black licorice at the very bottom of the deepest part of the Black Sea.

I do what I do," I said, "in order to do something else.

Nowhere in the world is safe," Count Olaf said. Not with you around," Violet agreed. I'm no worse than anyone else," Count Olaf said.

There is a pair of snakes who have learned to drive a car so recklessly that they would run you over in the street and never stop to apologize.

...that's not why we broke up. I love it, I miss it, I hate to give it back to you, this complicated thing, it's why we stayed together

Composer” is a word which here means “a person who sits in a room, muttering and humming and figuring out what notes the orchestra is going to play.” This is called composing. But last night, the Composer was not muttering. He was not humming. He was not moving, or even breathing. This is called decomposing.