Gallows Humor Quotes

“So this is it," said Arthur, "We are going to die."
"Yes," said Ford, "except... no! Wait a minute!" He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. "What's this switch?" he cried.
"What? Where?" cried Arthur, twisting round.
"No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after all.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The idea of being strong for someone else having never entered their heads, I find myself in the position of having to console them. Since I'm the person going in to be slaughtered, this is somewhat annoying.”
― Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire

“We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.”
― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

“First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.”
― Steve Martin

“Men die. It's practically what they're for.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Nothing like an arcane literary debate with your tyrannical master while you pass the time leading to your execution.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“His hatred for all was so intense that it should extinguish the very love from which it was conceived. And thus, he ceased to feel. There was nothing further in which to believe that made the prospect of feeling worthwhile. Daily he woke up and cast downtrodden eyes upon the sea and he would say to himself with a hint of regret at his hitherto lack of indifference, 'All a dim illusion, was it? Surely it was foolish of me to think any of this had meaning.' He would then spend hours staring at the sky, wondering how best to pass the time if everything—even the sky itself— were for naught. He arrived at the conclusion that there was no best way to pass the time. The only way to deal with the illusion of time was to endure it, knowing full well, all the while, that one was truly enduring nothing at all. Unfortunately for him, this nihilistic resolution to dispassion didn’t suit him very well and he soon became extremely bored. Faced now with the choice between further boredom and further suffering, he impatiently chose the latter, sailing another few weeks along the coast , and then inland, before finally dropping anchor off the shores of the fishing village of Yami.”
― Ashim Shanker, Only the Deplorable

“The ego refuses to be distressed by the provocations of reality, to let itself be compelled to suffer. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world; it shows, in fact, that such traumas are no more than occasions for it to gain pleasure.”
― Sigmund Freud

“Life is warped. I'm just in sync.”
― Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam

“I kept a picture of me kissing my dad’s corpse on the forehead in my wallet for years. I’d break it out any time someone showed me a baby picture, just so they would know how it ends.”
― Doug Stanhope, Digging Up Mother: A Love Story

“Live, die, something else lives. The very soil humanity walks upon is built up from death. Digging into a flowerbed means digging into bones.”
― M. Jones, Frankie & Formaldehyde

“Gallows humor is part of having a doctor in the house. Deal with it.”
― J.R. Ward, Lover Enshrined

“Certainty. Life's last and kindest gift.”
― Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere

“Fell?' he asked. 'Or was pushed?'

Anton shrugged again. 'It hardly makes a difference,' he said, 'when you are the man at the bottom of the stairs.”
― Michael Montoure, Slices

“I hope I died honorably. I have a great deal to atone for. - Eler Nersal”
― Lynda Williams

“SPOILER ALERT: We all die in the end.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The dead, Your Honor, do not agonize over their crimes and do not long to be happy, as you know.”
― Hassan Blasim, The Corpse Exhibition and Other Stories of Iraq

“I read a report that said 88% of adults trust their doctors - well, 100% of dead people don't!”
― Stewart Stafford

“For the past ten days, I've had a migraine that follows me like a shadow. One hundred and forty-two hours of incessant pain, an eight on the ten-point scale. My doctor has suggested codeine, which I refused, because once I took too much Percocet after a tooth extraction and threw up for twenty-four hours straight. I have a CT scan, an MRI, I go to the neurologist—the readings are all inconclusive. I'm told it's a migraine with an unknown cause. Have you tried yoga? they say.”
― Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans

“If I could return as a ghost, there are so many people, beginning with the judge of the Court of Cassation, that I would like to terrify. It would be wonderful to scare them witless and make them grovel.”
― Kanno Sugako, Reflexiones de camino a la horca

“Any port in a storm.”
― Michael J. Tougias, Ten Hours Until Dawn: The True Story of Heroism and Tragedy Aboard the Can Do

“I hammered on the Poes' front door like Alaric on the gates of Rome. Poe said that a gaudy figure of speech was a silk cravat around a dirty neck. He didn't say whether the truth lay in the plain thing or in its fancy.”
― Norman Lock, The Port-Wine Stain

“I'd like a break. I'm forty-six, so the undertow is beginning to get to me."
"Then what are you good for?" she asked, in a kind tone.
"Oh, a man around the house has his uses. A dildo; an ear to talk to; two arms around you; a voice from the next room when you're lonesome."
"I have a dog to talk to."
"That might be a deal killer.”
― Edward Hoagland, In the Country of the Blind

“I prithee give me leave to curse awhile.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1

“If I wake up in the morning and see a bedroom ceiling, I say: "Another day? Let's go!" If I woke up and saw a wooden coffin or urn lid, I'd probably say: "Oh...back to bed.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Do you know what irony is, de Leon?

They make swords out of it, don't they? Mix it with coally and hit it with a hammery?”
― Jay Kristoff, Empire of the Vampire

“Often eating took considerable extra time, since he could hardly see his food, groping with a fork or spoon, enforcedly omnivorous. "Blind men wear spotted pants," Dorothy teased, telling him to wash his...”
― Edward Hoagland, In the Country of the Blind

“But what are we going to do?" Colonel Cathcart exclaimed with distress. "The others are all waiting outside."
"Why don't we give him a medal?" Colonel Korn proposed.
"For going around twice? What can we give him a medal for?"
"For goung around twice," Colonel Korn answered with a reflective, self-satisfied smile. "After all, I suppose it did take a lot of courage to go over the target a second time with no other planes around to divert the antiaircraft fire. And he did hit the bridge. You know, that might be the answer—to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“When a violent murder occurs most people always expect it was a man, most never expect a woman, sometimes if we are not wary, we literally can be a victim of our expectations.”
― C.A.A. Savastano

“You can’t call yourself a mortician till you’ve slept in a casket.”
― W.H. Cameron, Crossroad