Is it fair for the bears to come down to where humans live, looking for food? Is it fair for the Duke's soldiers to shoot at them? Is it fair for the bears to crush them with giant snowballs? Often, if you point out something that isn't fair, someone will reply, "Life isn't fair." What is to be done with such people?

I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.

The way that the stories go in the Snicket books is just the way stories naturally go to me. They're full of misery, and yet the misery ends up being slightly hilarious. And in terms of the warnings on the back of the books, that really started as an honest assessment of their marketability.

Grammar is the greatest joy in life, don't you find?

There is no easy way to train an apprentice. My two tools are example and nagging.

I found powerful the idea that everything we have is, in effect, stolen from everybody else.

There are some things we might not know,but that doesnt mean we should give up.We can find out what we need to know.We can find out everything