The last time I saw you I was trying to throw thumbtacks into your cradle!

The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up.

This knowledge sits in my heart, heavy as a paperweight.

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.

Members of your family might say they are working hard all day long, while you are off at school or clarinet lessons, but the only way to know this for sure is to follow them at a discreet distance.

We laughed the rest of the way, because the point of this story is, it is not the cookies. It is the love.

You know, there's a big world out there filled with desperate orphans who would gladly swim across an ocean of thumbtacks just to be eclipsed by the long shadow that is cast by my accomplishments.