clementinecompendiumDamn, does any modern writer go harder than Daniel Handler?!
The three of us stood there for a minute. I don’t know what Stew was thinking, and the filing cabinet wasn’t thinking anything. But I was thinking, is this the world? Is this really the place in which you’ve ended up, Snicket? It was a question that struck me, as it might strike you, when something ridiculous was going on, or something sad. I wondered if this was really where I should be, or if there was another world someplace, less ridiculous and less sad. But I never knew the answer to the question. Perhaps I had been in another world before I was born, and did not remember it, or perhaps I would see another world when I died, which I was in no hurry to do. In the meantime I knew only the world I was in. In the meantime I was stuck in this police station, doing something so ridiculous it felt sad, and feeling so sad that it was ridiculous. The world of the police station, the world of Stain’d-by-the-Sea and all of the wrong questions I was asking, was the only world I could see.
— "When Did You See Her Last?" - All The Wrong Questions no.2 - Lemony Snicket / Art by Seth
#Lemony-Snicket #Daniel-Handler #All-the-Wrong-Questions #children's-literature #book-quote #beautiful-words #support-your-local-library
Bernadette A. Lear
Assoc for Scottish Literature
Cécile Boulaire
FID Anglo-American Culture
Kathy Bryson