Daniel Handler Quotes

Undeveloped, the whole thing,tossed into a box before we really had a chance to know what we had, and that's why we broke up.

You know I want to be a director, but you could never truly see the movies in my head and that, Ed, is why we broke up.

One cannot spend forever sitting and solving the mysteries of oone's history.

Adverbs is a book about love, and I thought that was pretty cheerful, but people who are reading it now are telling me that it's actually quite dark.

It seems to me that oftentimes in young relationships once there's a problem of some significance then it's almost like they're both racing for the dumper buzzer.

When I wrote Rick, I had the idea that I would take the plot of nearly every opera and turn it into a dark film, which is something I still may do.

Like a lot of people whose children were small in the 2000s, I read [Daniel Handler] books out loud and I loved them.

I first told the idea to an editor I had met who, after reading one of my novels for adults that was set in a high school, had an idea that I might write something for children.

For every teenager I know, having a phone is a mixed blessing, because your parents can press a button and figure out where you are.

Mostly, it's flattering to meet fans. As long as it's in a planned, professional meeting, rather than, say, someone dropping by my home, which is not as pleasant.

I was never a fan of anything, and yet some people are fans of my books. That's a bit odd. But I like meeting them.

One has to adopt a sort of Zen calm, in which you know you wrote the best book that you could at the time.

I always think it's silly when people talk about works of culture taking risks. Because there's not any risk involved.

I think if I were walking someplace and I saw a corpse my brain would tell me it was a million things before I believed it was a corpse.

I like to think that I get better and better as a writer, but it seems pretty easy to me to slip on disguises of various people.

I think there are probably just as many adults who would miss the humor of my books, if not more, as there are children.

The trouble with talking about irony is, it's such a slippery thing that the second you start talking about it, you're a better example of it than you are an analyst.

I don't think film is the writer's medium, and so I was interested to see what a director would do with it.

I find reading screenplays difficult, as they're only a roadmap for what a movie might end up being.

It turns out she is Canadian, my editor, and so she drinks like a fish. So she wasn't a lightweight at all. And in the morning, she said that the idea still seemed like a good one, and here we are.

I had this idea about terrible things happening to orphans, and I knew it was such a horrible idea that the idea of writing it down and then submitting it professionally was obviously absurd.

I decided that it might be interesting to have terrible things happen to orphans over and over again.

I love meeting people who have absolutely no sense of irony. It's really fascinating to imagine what it would be like to go through life without understanding even the most basic of ironies.

It's funny, particularly when you're a writer and you're doing well, you have that sense of like, "Oh! My view of the world is the one that's going to be published."

I do think of emotions as being on a circular path, so you can feel terrible and terrible and terrible, and then all of a sudden it becomes quite funny.

He thought she knew what he meant, but the biggest mistake you can make is thinking they know what you mean.

It will be a very long time before I trust you ever, ever - OK, I trust you again.

She was all the world’s money, and I would spend it with her, my sharpest friend who changed the tide, my only comfort from the brutal gamble of the world and the wicked ways of men.

I guess it's funny how life turns out?" she tried. "Not last I checked, " Errol said with a snort.

I'd ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you. And I did. But that right there was why it was doomed.

You know I want to be a directos, but you could never truly see the movies in my head and that, Ed, is why we broke up.

I'm dumping the whole box back into your life Ed, every item of you and me. I'm dumping this box on your porch, Ed, but it's you, Ed, who is getting dumped.

You winked, took the change. I should have seen it, Ed, as a sign that you were unreliable. Instead, I saw it as a sign of charming, which is why I didn't break it off right then and there.

Another gift, another secret, another time to lean in and kiss me.

You can’t mind these things, you just can’t, for to dislike what makes a person human is to dislike all humans.

She had the look in her eye when you kick and kick at the door and it doesn't open, when you write a boy letters and letters and he never loves you, not ‘til the day he dies. Not even then.

I write longhand on legal pads, about half at home and half in cafes. I drink a lot of water and eat a lot of raw carrots.

I write every day weekdays for about 5 hours, mostly longhand on legal pads. It has gotten neither harder nor easier, sadly or happily.