Every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, "The world is quiet here," as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.

I think if I were walking someplace and I saw a corpse my brain would tell me it was a million things before I believed it was a corpse.

I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but first impressions are often entirely wrong. You can look at a painting for the first time, for example, and not like it at all, but after looking at it a little longer you may find it very pleasing. The first time you try Gorgonzola cheese you may find it too strong, but when you are older you may want to eat nothing but Gorgonzola cheese. Klaus, when Sunny was born, did not like her at all, but by the time she was six weeks old the two of them were thick as thieves. Your initial opinion on just about anything may change over time.

This is an absurd moral, for you and I both know that sometimes not only is it good to lie, it is necessary to lie.

You must be all a-tingle with excitement.' 'I guess so,' I said, but I did not feel a-tingle. I did not feel a-anything.

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.

Life isn't fair," he said, in his undisguised voice, and for once the Baudelaire orphans agreed with every word the man said.