- Lemony Snicket: When you read an enormous number of books, you are going to learn a great deal of information that might not be useful for a long time. But then, suddenly, like a strike of lightning or a grand piano falling out of a window, an opportunity arises to use the information gleaned from even the most unlikely piece of reading.
- [last lines]
- Lemony Snicket: I am alone this evening. I'm alone because of a cruel twist of fate, a phrase which means, "Nothing has gone the way I thought it would." I once was a content man with a comfortable home, a successful career, a woman that I loved very much, and an extremely reliable typewriter. But all those things are gone. All I have to remember those happy days is this tattoo on my ankle.
- Hal: [walking away from the smoldering building] It's all gone. It's all gone.
- Lemony Snicket: Sometimes life feels like some dismal story presented as entertainment by a cruel and invisible mother. It isn't a pleasant way to feel. But what choice do we have?
- Violet Baudelaire: What's the fastest way out of this hospital?
- Babs: There is no fast way. First, you have to file the release papers in quadruplicate. And then those papers have to be authorized.
- Violet Baudelaire: Is there a way out of here where I don't have to fill out any paperwork?
- Babs: You can die.
- Count Olaf: Have you ever hunted, Violet?
- Violet Baudelaire: Of course not.
- Count Olaf: Well, if you had, you'd be familiar with a particular experience. There is a particular moment at the end of a long hunt when you have the animal cornered. And the animal looks into your eyes, deep into them, to see if there's any mercy in there. And when it sees that there is not, it gives up. It gives its life to you.
- Count Olaf: [speaking in the operating theatre] As I'm sure you've heard, a cranial-ectomy is a procedure in which the patient's head is removed. Scientists have discovered that many health problems are rooted in the brainial area. And so the best thing to do for the patient is remove the head altogether. Now a cranial-ectomy is as dangerous as it is necessary.
- White Faced Woman #1: It smells like disinfectant in here.
- White Faced Woman #2: I know, I'm hungry too.
- Lemony Snicket: Sometimes life feels like some dismal story presented as entertainment by some cruel and invisible author. It isn't a pleasant way to feel. But what choice do we have?