Daniel Handler Quotes

The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up.

~ Daniel Handler

A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.

~ Daniel Handler

I gasped and pointed the way. I gave you an adventure, Ed, right in front of you but you never saw it until I showed you, and that's why we broke up.

~ Daniel Handler

This is how it is in life and love. In life and love we are with people for a while, and then we join other people, people we have not met, and we walk with them, and we leave behind all the things we used to be. Sometimes we leave people behind too... This happens everyday. Everyday this happens and scarcely anybody cares.

~ Daniel Handler

Everything else has vanished, so you take them now. Maybe if you're the one keeping them, I'll be the one feeling better.

~ Daniel Handler

There are so many movies like this, where you thought you were smarter than the screen but the director was smarter than you, of course he's the one, of course it was a dream, of course she's dead, of course, it's hidden right there, of course it's the truth and you in your seat have failed to notice in the dark.

~ Daniel Handler

For every girl I thought I was uncomplicated sex, it wasn't. Put it this way: if you can't see the complication, you're probably it.

~ Daniel Handler

No, when you love someone you spend hours and hours with them, and even the mightiest forces in the netherworld could not say whether the hours you spend increase your love or if you simply spend more hours with someone as your love increases.

~ Daniel Handler

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

~ Daniel Handler

Call me later, you’d said, so I could call you later, at night, and it is those nights I miss you, Ed, the most, on the phone, you beautiful bastard.

~ Daniel Handler

I'm not a believer in predetermined fates, being rewarded for one's efforts. I'm not a believer in karma. The reason why I try to be a good person is because I think it's the right thing to do. If I commit fewer bad acts there will be fewer bad acts, maybe other people will join in committing fewer bad acts, and in time there will be fewer and fewer of them.

~ Daniel Handler

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

~ Daniel Handler

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.

~ Daniel Handler

The file clanked against me, my stupid idea nobody would have gotten had I ever done it. You even wouldn't have gotten it, Ed, I thought, watching her go. It's why we broke up, so here it is. Ed, how could you?

~ Daniel Handler

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.

~ Daniel Handler

I'm a lunatic wandering around for scraps, I'm like every single miserable moron I've scorned, and pretended I didn't recognize. I'm all of them, every last ugly thing in a bad last-minute costume. I'm not different, not at all, not different from any other speck of a thing.

~ Daniel Handler

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.

~ Daniel Handler

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.

~ Daniel Handler

I'm writing it in a letter, the whole truth of why it happened. And the truth is that I goddamn loved you so much.

~ Daniel Handler

Here we are at the bottom, almost empty. It's like confetti, these dried remnants you find in the street for a party no one invited you to. But they used to be, I can admit, part of something beautiful.

~ Daniel Handler

I'm nothing, not a single thing. The only particle I had, the only tiny thing raising me up, is that I was Ed Slaterton's girlfriend, loved by you for like ten secs, and who cares, so what, and not anymore so how embarrassing for me.

~ Daniel Handler

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.

~ Daniel Handler

There were a million things, everything, I didn't know. I was stupid, the official descriptive phrase for happy. I took this thing I'm giving you back, this thing you gave me as the star we were waiting for finally emerged.

~ Daniel Handler

We thought we had time. I waved but couldn't answer, because I was finally letting myself grin as wide as I'd wanted all afternoon, all evening, every sec of every minute with you, Ed. Shit, I guess I already loved you then.

~ Daniel Handler

Phillip Murray and Wanda Saxton meet in the last scene under the rainy awning, their wrong wife and fiance finally story-lined away, and walk out together into the downpour - we know from the first scene, Christmas eve, that both of them like walking in the rain but don't have anybody who will do it with them - and it's the miracle of the ending.

~ Daniel Handler

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

~ Daniel Handler

All over the world are particular people, and you could be happy with probably five or six of them, eight if you're bisexual and everyone is.

~ Daniel Handler

This teaching job did not pay a lot of money, because, let's face it, nobody gives a flying fuck about education, but it was a temporary position.

~ Daniel Handler

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

~ Daniel Handler

Phil Needle stood in the parking lot, suddenly grasping that this was so, that nothing is lost in a world utterly mapped, that nothing is rogue with everything cross-pollinated, as the shouts on the beach lured him across the street to the sand.

~ Daniel Handler

If he’s not gay and he hung out with you the whole time, he wanted to be. It’s boyfriend or want to be boyfriend or I guess gay. Those are the choices.

~ Daniel Handler

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.

~ Daniel Handler

But before, not so long ago - my own rose from prom still OK on the mirror, dried but not a corpse - you were just Ed Slaterton, jocky hero, handsome in the student newspaper and star of a million strands of gossip. Now Annette was a person to me, standing right there, and not just an oh-my-God-have-you-heard, and I tried to put it together in my head, the print and the negative, the boyfriend and the celebrity shadow, like Theodora Sire sat next to me in history, borrowing pencils, but was still a movie star above my bed. Because as you came out of the dark to me, you were the boy I was kissing and wanted to kiss more, back to find me at a party like anybody might do, but you were Ed Slaterton too, and not the cad you are now, but just Ed Slaterton, co-captain, with a beer in your hand and Jillian Beach on your arm.

~ Daniel Handler

And then like a song we'd forgotten was even on the mix, you stepped into the house and my whole life.

~ Daniel Handler

The movie was kickass, which was appropriate, because tonight it was called Kickass: The Movie.

~ Daniel Handler

I know you can't see it, not you, Ed, but maybe if I tell you the whole plot you'll understand it this once, because even now I want you to see it. I don't love you anymore, of course I don't, but there's still something I can show you. You know I want to be a director, but you never truly see the movies in my head and that, Ed, is why we broke up.

~ Daniel Handler

Maybe, generations ago, young people rebelled out of some clear motive, but now, we know we’re rebelling. Between teen movies and sex-ed textbooks we’re so ready for our rebellious phase we can’t help but feel it’s safe, contained. It will turn out all right, despite the risk, snug in the shell of rebellion narrative. Rebellion narrative, does that make sense? It was appropriate to do, so we did it.

~ Daniel Handler

I didn't like books where people played on a sports team and won a bunch of games, or went to summer camp and had a wonderful time. I really liked a book where a witch might cut a child's head off or a pack of angry dogs might burst through a door and terrorize a family.

~ Daniel Handler

I like to give people novels I think they would like, on no particular occasion - just when we're in a bookstore together. I like to receive reference books on my birthday.

~ Daniel Handler

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.

~ Daniel Handler