Daniel Handler Quotes

I really, really wanted to lose awareness of the here and now. The best way for me to do that was bury myself in a book.

I was always a big reader, even when everything was bad and miserable.

Reading was my escape growing up in Ohio. Both of my parents lost their jobs when I was a teen, and it was hard. But I always had my books. Reading gave me a way of living different lives.

Humor is an escape, because you cannot think about your problems when you are trying to be funny; so, in essence, "being a humorist" gives you a valid excuse to hide from your pain.

Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book. Well, Mumsy, no, not really. Your beloved large-print sagas of rags, riches, and heartbreak were no camouflage against the miseries trained on you by the tennis ball launcher of life, were they? But, yes, Mum, there again, you have a point. Books don’t offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.

That's maybe the reason he does so many things so that he will not have to think .

I spent my entire time reading books and going to the cinema, just to escape.

Half the time I pick up a book, that's what I'm trying to get.

When I was 35 I realized that I was still thinking a lot about what it would be like to go to Narnia. To really go - not just in a daydream, or in a children's book, but what it would actually feel like, physically, psychologically, every other way. The idea was haunting me.

In this job, there are some simple pleasures that really help you cope. One is books, I mean, books are a great escape. Books are a way to get your mind on something else.

escapism isn't good or bad in itself. what is important is what you are escaping from and where you are escaping to.

Right now, though, I wanted not to think forward or backward, but only to lose myself in the words.

I wanted to find a place to hide from all of it, where the nightmares and the rivers and reality couldn't find me. For me, that place was always inside a book.

Books became my world because the world I was in was very hard.

Books afford the surest relief in the most melancholy moments.

I think there is one smashing rule: never face the facts.

A well-chosen book saves you from everything, including yourself.

I may say it of our preposterous use of books,--He knew not what to do, and so he read.

Some people read to confirm their own hopelessness. Others read to be rescued from it.

There was no answer, no solution, no sop, no deliverance. What, then, did I do? I read faster.

Every day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in time, it began to take shape.

I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.

I look at [books] as a child looks at cakes - with glittering eyes and a watering mouth, imagining the pleasure that awaits him.

Get through the moment. Avoid confrontation. Run away. That's pretty much how we get through our own lives, watching television. Smoking crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting our own attention. Jacking off. Denial.

Reading gives one something to think about other than one's self.