Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.

We are a nation of children letting horrible things happen, and flunking Calc.

A successful villain should have all these things at his or her villainous fingertips, or else give up villainy altogether and try to lead a life of decency, integrity, and kindness, which is much more challenging and noble, if not always quite as exciting.

Don’t repeat yourself. It’s not only repetitive, it’s redundant, and people have heard it before.

And a refrigerator may hold a basket of strawberries, which would be important if a maniac said to you, "If you don't give me a basket of strawberries right now, I'm going to poke you with this large stick." But when the two elder Baudelaires and Quigley Quagmire opened the refrigerator, they found nothing that would help someone who was wounded, dying of thirst, or being threatened by a strawberry-crazed, stick-carrying maniac.

it is a sad truth in life that when someone has lost a loved one, friends sometimes avoid the person, just when the presence of friends is most needed.

13. 99 percent is a very large percentage. For instance, easily 99 percent of people want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and the occasional slice of cake for dessert. Surely an arrangement can be made with that niggling 1 percent who disagree.