Daniel Handler Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I have a vernacular house on the seaside in Northumberland and an Edwardian semi in south Manchester. They're both exactly as big as they need to be. I can't be doing with an ostentatious, big house - you can only be in one room at a time.
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Today we try to identify a gene and then study its properties.
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When it looks like I may live longer than five minutes I'll drop cigarettes like a hot potato.
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You don't go into politics unless you want to win.
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I think, like any artist, those baby songs are not the best things you've ever written, but they count because they're you're first attempts at creating art and expressing yourself.
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I never quite toed the line. I was a bit disruptive. All my early school reports from the age of 5 were 'Daniel must learn not to distract others.' And now, that's what I do for a living.
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As far as my journal, I want to share tour life with my fans.
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Sailors ought never to go to church. They ought to go to hell, where it is much more comfortable.
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I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work.
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If members of the security apparatus could, with impunity, keep from those elected by the people that which they're entitled to know - or worse, feed false information - those who could control the classified data could be the real decision makers.
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I was involved in legislating dozens of laws, perhaps hundreds. But my glory didn't lie in legislative work, if there is any glory in it. The Israeli law books are full of laws that aren't enforced anyway.
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Public appearances are a headache. I hold mine down to a minimum.
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A lot of money eliminates a category of worry. If your car breaks down, you're still going to get through the day. But it doesn't make you a happy person if you weren't a happy person before.
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Social media buzz can lead to huge successes when people spread the word about something they love and want to share. But authors creating their own buzz? Making their own noise? It's hard to make a lot of noise on our own about our own work. Except, sadly, negative noise.
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Most people draw from the mind, not the eye. They draw the idea of a table or a face, not what's in front of them. We don't actually see the line of the jaw as a line and we don't see an eye as a perfectly outlined almond shape.
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The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
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If I'm pushed, I'd also have to admit I don't like people with allergies. They just annoy me. There seems to be something far too self-centred about it. 'No thanks, I'm allergic.' Why not just say 'No thanks'? I wasn't asking for your medical history, I was just passing around the nuts. Trying to be friendly, that's all.
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Every role is a new form of surrender.
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I have a 92 year old father whose doing beautifully who lives in Chicago and a sister and a nephew and a niece and I love coming back and try to do so fairly often.
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I think people have a misinterpretation of Method acting, because Method acting is a wonderful thing. The thing is, if you take it too seriously, it's like religion. You start to think it's the truth. But it's not the truth. It's just a way to get somewhere.
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Nothing proves the truth of surrealism so much as photography. The Zeiss lens has unexpected faculties of surprise!
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The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.
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The sad truth is that the truth is sad.
