A Series of Unfortunate Events #3: The Wide Window

But despite all of Aunt Josephine's faults, the orphans still cared about her. She had taught them many things, even if most of them were boring. She had provided a home, even if it was cold and unable to withstand hurricanes. And the children knew that Aunt Josephine, like the Baudelaires themselves, had experienced some terrible things in her life. So as their guardian faded from view and the lights of Damocles Dock approached closer and closer, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny did not think "Josephine, schmosephine." They thought "We hope Aunt Josephine is safe."

have each other in the midst of their unfortunate lives felt like having a sailboat in the middle of a hurricane, and to the Baudelaire orphans this felt very fortunate indeed.

The Gordian Knot was a fancy knot tied in a piece of rope by a king named Gordius. Gordius said that if Alexander could untie it, he could rule the whole kingdom. But Alexander, who was too busy conquering places to learn how to untie knots, simply drew his sword and cut the Gordian Knot in two. This was cheating, of course, but Alexander had too many soldiers for Gordius to argue, and soon everybody in Gordium had to bow down to You-Know-Who the Great. Ever since then, a difficult problem can be called a Gordian Knot, and if you solve the problem in a simple way—even if the way is rude—you are cutting the Gordian Knot.

It is very easy to say that the important thing is to try your best, but if you are in real trouble the most important thing is not trying your best, but getting to safety

Tears are curious things, for like earthquakes or puppet shows they can occur at any time, without any warning and without any good reason.

Just because something is typed—whether it is typed on a business card or typed in a newspaper or book—this does not mean that it is true.

dawned on them” simply means “They figured something out,

assuaged, which is a fancy word for “relieved”

phantasmagorical” here means “all the creepy, scary words you can think of put together”

mollify” here means “get them to stop tearing their hair out in worry