Writing is a dying form. One reads of this every day.

The story of the Baudelaires takes place in a very real world, where some people are laughed at just because they have something wrong with them, and where children can find themselves all alone in the world, struggling to understand the mystery that surrounds them.

Everybody has a theory.

I was not a particularly brave child, I think, because I had a narrative mind, because my mind automatically went to any terrible thing that could happen.

For some stories, it's easy. The moral of 'The Three Bears,' for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house.' The moral of 'Snow White' is 'Never eat apples.' The moral of World War I is 'Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.

Reader: Dear Mr. Snicket, What is the best way to keep a secret? Lemony Snicket : Tell it to everyone you know, but pretend you are kidding.

Opera was an enormous part of my childhood. My parents were both opera buffs, and they met in the box seat of an opera performance. And I also was a boy soprano, so before puberty hit, I was onstage playing a wide variety of orphans and urchins in all sorts of operas, and the sheer melodrama of their stories was just always appealing to me.