Gallows Humour Quotes

“You mean that because I have no name I cannot die and that you cannot be held answerable for death even if you kill me?"

"That is about the size of it," said the Sergeant.

I felt so sad and so entirely disappointed that tears came into my eyes and a lump of incommunicable poignancy swelled tragically in my throat. I began to feel intensely every fragment of my equal humanity. The life that was bubbling at the end of my fingers was real and nearly painful in intensity and so was the beauty of my warm face and the loose humanity of my limbs and the racy health of my red rich blood. To leave it all without good reason and to smash the little empire into small fragments was a thing too pitiful even to refuse to think about.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“In the political jargon of those days, the word "intellectual" was an insult. It indicated someone who did not understand life and was cut off from the people. All the Communists who were hanged at the time by other Communists were awarded such abuse. Unlike those who had their feet solidly on the ground, they were said to float in the air. So it was fair, in a way, that as punishment the ground was permanently pulled out from under their feet, that they remained suspended a little above the floor.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“A professor from UBC observed that he agreed with Alexander Pope about the ultimate unreality of evil. Seen from the highest point of metaphysics. To a rational mind, nothing bad ever really happens. He was talking high-minded balls. Twaddle! I thought. I said, 'Oh? Do you mean that every gas chamber has a silver lining?”
― Saul Bellow, Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories

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

“My God . . . that grinding is a greeting.
My arrival is honored with the honing of an axe”
― Simon Armitage, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

“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

“Of course she was bloody found dead." Moore grumbled. "Some bastard cut off her head and her limbs. If she'd been found alive I would have been more than bloody surprised.”
― Sarah Pinborough, Mayhem

“No one gets out of this world alive...except astronauts.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Found dead. A verdict as useful as a fucking Bible in the Bluegate Brothel.”
― Sarah Pinborough, Mayhem

“The coronavirus outbreak feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone. I went to see a doctor the other day, and they told me to wear a face mask. Then they said how much it would cost to see the doctor and I told them THEY were the ones who should be wearing masks!”
― Stewart Stafford

“Truth or Care by Stewart Stafford

It's not every day you find out you're going to die,
A sweaty doctor hit me right between the eyes,
With my body's Judas kiss and then I was prey,
Life had left me without any cards to play.

Reading the shocked expression on my face,
The doctor played his "it's treatable" ace,
Treatable is good but curable is better,
Survival hinges on the placement of letters.

Turns out I never had a chance, sadly,
The doctor lied to me and lied badly,
Flop sweat had put truth to the sword,
And I'm writing all this through a ouija board.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“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

“If anyone at my funeral says 'it's what he would have wanted', I'll kick the lid off my coffin and throttle them. Or, if I've been cremated, I'll flip the lid off the urn and become a dust storm in their eyes. Only you know what you truly want. Anything else is presumption skewed through personal agendas.”
― Stewart Stafford

“I always knew I'd be killed by a cliché.”
― James Crumley, The Mexican Tree Duck

“A man can only die so often.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace