Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler
Daniel Handleris an American writer and journalist. He is best known for his work under the pen name Lemony Snicket, having published children's series A Series of Unfortunate Events and All the Wrong Questions under this pseudonym. He has also published adult novels under his real name; his first book The Basic Eight was rejected by many publishers for its dark subject matter. His most recent book is We Are Pirates. Handler has also played the accordion in several bands...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 February 1970
CitySan Francisco, CA
CountryUnited States of America
Morning is an important time of day, because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have.
Criminals should be punished, not fed pastries.
I often can't remember which scenes are and aren't in the final product, because I saw so many different versions of the Lemony Snicket that I forget which ended up on the cutting-room floor.
Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course.
It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are really right and the person who is really wrong is proving you wrong and proving himself, wrongly, right.
A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled", describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used. The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn't hear him as he cried for help. Sure enough, that poet is dead.
The more I protest that I'm not Lemony Snicket, and that I'm Daniel Handler instead, the more it becomes clear to the audience that I am in fact Lemony Snicket, that I am in fact standing in front of them.
Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night's sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too.
Even though there are no ways of knowing for sure, there are ways of knowing for pretty sure.
Oftentimes. when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.
The idea that the curtain rises on what is often more or less a happy scene, and it will fall just a few hours later, and everyone will be dead or have gone mad... I find that kind of narrative very appealing.
Like a church bell, a coffin, and a vat of melted chocolate, a supply closet is rarely a comfortable place to hide.
Desperate times call for desperate measures" is an aphorism which here means "sometimes you need to change your facial expression in order to create a workable disguise." The quoting of an aphorism, such as "It takes a village to raise a child," "No news is good news," and "Love conquers all," rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen, which is why we provide our volunteers with a disguise kit in addition to helpful phrases of advice.
A new experience can be extremely pleasurable, or extremely irritating, or somewhere in between, and you never know until you try it out.