Daniel Handler
American author, screenwriter and accordionist.
... the point is, why is there cruelty? Why do people ask other people to do impossible things? why behave this way? why is there mean, when there are better things than mean, love particularly?
"When I was crazy." the radio explained, "I thought you were great."
Wedding after wedding after wedding and then yours - your wedding? Would that make you what they're now calling happy?
"Oh my god!" Hillary is standing in the doorway of the bathroom of the bathroom which on one had is surprising but there's the other hand, too.
What a bad day it was, the clouds were low and cloudy, the rain no fun, and the dark as it hit the late afternoon thick like someone who stops by your place and just won't leave. The day was canceled, almost, on account of the rain spilling itself over everything.
Money money money money money money money money money. Let no one say it has no place in a love story. It has a particular place. It is something on the right shelf.
They are all one, the mothers of us all, like the money you spent. Imagine the vanish of weight if the advice of your mother never existed. They tell us things, unless we have no mothers and either way things turn out such that nothing you've ever heard is ever any help.
This world is suchier than we are, and the best thing to do is keep moving and find your keys.
Love was in the air so both of us walked through love on our way to the corner.
Standing ten feet away from Lila was sort of kickass with her nails drumming on the box with the slot in, where we put everything that we rip in half, and with her blue-eyed beauty and with the gum she was chewing and how lovely she was, in that way that makes you want to find something else lovely just so you can give it to her and see how really kickass it is to have to lovely things next to each other.
It was the sort of day when people walk in the park and solve problems. "We'll simply call the taxi company, David, and request a large one, like one of those vans." Is the sort of thing you would overhear if you were overhearing in the park.
[she] gave me a puzzled frown like she thought offhand i was dead but the media's so unreliable these days.
"Instead of change, please give me gun so i can shoot you." She is soft-spoken but short and full of rage lately, like her whole life.
The world gets grimy and the love object is in stark relief from its surroundings. This is love, a pretty thing on an ugly street and why wouldn't you pick it up if it appeared in a taxi cab.
"I know" Helena said and this is another example of why behave this way? Things just poured out of her mouth lately, like vomit, and sometimes it actually was.
Over the years they had developed a layer of sincerity over the irony over the sincerity. It was an irony sandwich, then, which tasted mostly like sincerity, like a cheap, bad sandwich.
"Yeah, I have a question," said the guy with the wicked eyes... "My question is, I quit. I'm going to quit."
This is love, moving to where the money is, and all the while a volcano or an ex-girlfriend might blow the whole thing to hell, as the Americans say. As everybody says.
God, or somebody, what is it with terrible things? If you made this world why not a better one?
This was that day if you know what I mean.