For Beatrice, when we met, my life began. Soon afterwards, yours ended.

So every so often, when I meet someone who's honestly appalled by my books and doesn't understand why they would be attractive to people... I find such people sort of charming, even though they usually don't like me.

Of course I'm trying to trick you! That's the way of the world, Baudelaires. Everyone runs around with their secrets and their schemes, trying to outwit everyone else.

I'm always interested to see what films are made of books. I kind of don't participate as a filmgoer in any kind of debate about what's better, the book or the movie. So I think it's interesting when people want to do it.

But one type of book that practically no one likes to read is a book about the law. Books about the law are notorious for being very long, very dull, and very difficult to read. This is one reason many lawyers make heaps of money. The money is an incentive - the word "incentive" here means "an offered reward to persuade you to do something you don't want to do - to read long, dull, and difficult books.

There are secrets everywhere. I think everyone's parents have secrets. You just have to know where to look for them.

A newspaper, as I'm sure you know, is a collection of supposedly true stories written down by writers who either saw them happen or talked to people who did. These writers are called journalists, and like telephone operators, butchers, ballerinas, and people who clean up after horses, journalists can sometimes make mistakes.