Poison for Breakfast

Involuntary noises are my least favorite kind of noise I can make. If I’m going to sound foolish I would at least like to have done it on purpose.

It is very embarrassing to cry when other people can see you, but it is something we all do eventually.

Not a single person understands kissing.

It was a lonely feeling, to think about something I could not imagine.

“Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension,”

“Well, that seems like a big part of your occupation, Mr. Snicket. Isn’t it? You walk the streets, usually with a book and some scraps of paper in your pocket, thinking about things and writing them down, and sooner or later you end up in a library.”

and so I entered into a conversation as I lay in the gravel thinking about a poisoned cactus and a pear merchant and if including the element of surprise is really the same as leaving certain things out, the way someone going on a journey might really be the same story as a stranger coming to town, if the only story is really somebody loses something and the only rule is to be bewildering, besides, of course, the rule nobody knows. Life is like this, and literature, imaginary conversations and true stories mingling like languages in translation.

Telling yourself that something does not matter is one of the loneliest things you can do, because you only say it, of course, about things that matter very much. But often, and this is the lonely part, they only matter to you.

Happiness, in my experience, is like a bowl of bananas, because if you pay too much attention, it gets gobbled away, but if you forget all about it, either a robber steals it or it ends up rotten mush.

the miracles of the world can seem even more impressive if you look at a meadow or a baby or some butterscotch syrup and believe that it all came from nothing.