Daniel Handler Quotes

Even if that were true, it wouldn't be irony," Lucas pointed out. "Irony is the contrast between what's said and what happens.

Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency.

I don't like the word ironic. I like the word absurdity, and I don't really understand the word 'irony' too much. The irony comes when you try to verbalize the absurd. When irony happens without words, it's much more exalted.

I never discuss discussions.

That's the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm.

Simply put, dramatic irony is when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning. For instance, if you were in a restaurant and said out loud, "I can't wait to eat the veal marsala I ordered," and there were people around who knew that the veal marsala was poisoned and that you would die as soon as you took a bite, your situation would be one of dramatic irony.

I want to get a tattoo of the word irony, only misspelled.

Irony is the attendant of hope and the fuel of hope is innocence.

Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and later try hard to make them seem light.

It's just something that's sort of funny, sort of not.

And now, excuse me while I interrupt myself.

Be obscure clearly.

I am a simple man, though my wife says I am complicated. I'll trust her on that one.

I'm a walking contradiction. I am funny that way.

I don't believe in acting teachers for me, so it's God's joke that he gave me a best friend who's an acting teacher.

On one level, I am a massive joker and can't take anything seriously, but on the other hand, I'm incredibly serious and a deep thinker, so I have that dichotomy within me.

Ironic things are interesting.

How can a song all about struggling with the afterglow of fame thrust someone into fame? How can a lyric like, 'I'm just a singer who already blew his shot,' give a singer another shot? I don't know... but it's funny.

Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whispering lacks of what might called the absolute beginning of the personal life. He lacks what at moments is indispensable for the personal life, lacks both the regeneration and rejuvenation, the cleaning baptism of irony that redeems the soul from having its life in finitude though living boldly and energetically in finitude.

There are “well-known secrets” out there and there are people who are “so happy they could die.” Sometimes people are so sad they have to laugh and sometimes things feel so wrong, they’re right. Basically what I’m saying is, I usually don’t know what people are talking about.

irony is an indispensable ingredient of the critical vision; it is the safest antidote to sentimental decay.

Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence.

The word abbreviation sure is long for what it means.

I am serious about not being serious.

Irony is based on insecurity; people like to not like things because they don't understand them.