Today's Baudelaires are hip-hop artists.

Birds were like dinosaurs' better selves. They had short lives and long summers. We all should be so lucky as to leave behind such heirs.

How wrong to have been so negative, how wrong to have been so gloomy, how wrong to have run away from life, how wrong to have said no, again and again, instead of yes.

What you discovered about yourself in raising children wasn't always agreeable or attractive.

He wanted this someone to see how much he hurt.

Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them.

I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second.