Gallows Humor Quotes

It's very good of you
"
"No, no, not at all. It's my hobby. Not proposing to people, I don't mean, but investigating things. Well, cheer-frightfully-ho and all that. And I'll call again, if I may."
"I will give the footman orders to admit you," said the prisoner, gravely, "you will always find me at home. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

KitKat 13:18:45: Who would your ideal prince be? Your childhood friend, Prince Charming, or a strong warrior?

Gallows Humor 13:19:10: I don't want to know which Disney Princess I am. I've told you before, stop doing online quizzes. Leave it.

Gallows Humor 13:22:19: He would love me for myself.

KitKat 13:22:57: Tell me about your dress. ~ Lauren James

So, you see, you will have to learn to listen to more of the radio music of life. It'll do you good. You are uncommonly poor in gifts, a poor blockhead, but by degrees you will come to grasp what is required of you. You have got to learn to laugh. That will be required of you. You must apprehend the humor of life, its gallows-humor. But of course you are ready for everything in the world except what will be required of you. You are ready to stab girls to death. You are ready to be executed with all solemnity. You would be ready, no doubt, to mortify and scourge yourself for centuries together. Wouldn't you? It is time to come to your senses...You are to live and to learn to laugh. You are to learn to listen to the cursed radio music of life and to reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh at its distortions. So there you are. More will not be asked of you ~ Hermann Hesse

So, now he's driving around with a little boy and a dead girl..." he prompted.
"Yeah, a dead girl in the back seat and a catatonic little boy up front." She paused. "He did pretty good considering."
She took a deep breath. "And right after he crossed the Sabine River, just outside of Orange, I sat up."
"You what? You just sat up?" He almost laughed at the image it conjured. This shouldn't be funny, not even in a gallows humor sort of way.
"Yeah. I don't think I remembered, just at that moment, that I'd been dead. I sat up, saw them and said, 'Why is Dylan in the front seat?'"
"First thing back from the dead, you start bitching? ~ Kinsey W. Holley

God forbid I should bleed to death, eh? Then you'd have to cart around my rotting corpse. (Kyrian)
Could you be any more morbid? Jeez, who was your idol growing up? Boris Karloff? (Amanda)
Hannibal, actually. (Kyrian)
You're trying to scare me, aren't you? Well, it won't work. I grew up in a house with an angry poltergeist and two sisters who used to conjure demons just to fight them. Buster, I've seen it all and your gallows humor isn't working on me. (Amanda) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I don't think you're dying," I said. "I think you've just got a touch of cancer.
He smiled. Gallows humor. ~ John Green

Comrades, we are going to try to cheer you up, and our sense of humor will help us in this endeavor, although the phrase gallows humor has never seemed so logical and appropriate. The external circumstances are exactly in our favor. We need only to take a look at the barbed wire fences, so high and full of electricity. Just like your expectations.
And then there are the watchtowers that monitor our every move. The guards have machine guns. But machine guns won't intimidate us, comrades. They just have barrels of guns, whereas we are going to have barrels of laughs.
You may be surprised at how upbeat and cheerful we are. Well, comrades, there are goods reasons for this. It's been a long time since we were in Berlin. But every time we appeared there, we felt very uneasy. We were afraid we'd get sent to the concentration camps. Now that fear is gone. We're already here. ~ Rudolph Herzog

At first the social worker may become too emotionally involved with his clients, so that when they fail he suffers, both because they are unhappy and because their failure is his failure, too. It's hard to spend his days confronting devastating problems that he cannot fix - the misery and helplessness rub off on him. It may seem to him that to feel happy or spend money on himself is to betray the people he knows who are still suffering; or it may seem that his own unhappiness is a sign of his devotion. Perhaps he becomes angry, blaming systems and society for what he cannot fix himself.

Gradually, he learns to be more detached. He realizes that he needs to be tough, and to develop a thick skin. But if he becomes too detached, he stops caring about his clients at all. Perhaps he withdraws into cynicism and self-defense, as he feels his ideals and his sense of potency wither. Longer-serving people in the office notice the waning of his enthusiasm, and welcome him to their gallows-humor fellowship. He retreats into apathy and jokes and drinks after work. But even with his fellow apathetics to keep him company, the situation is depressing, and he looks for a way out. ~ Larissa MacFarquhar

My dear dead mother wanted me to go into an honorable trade, like grave robbing. Would I listen? No. Be an assassin, like your uncle Gustav, she said. Would I pay heed? No. Apprentice to the Necromancer― ~ Raymond E. Feist

Certainty. Life's last and kindest gift. ~ Milan Kundera

Funny stories on set - there are thousands of them, but they are only funny to the people who were on the movies. You start to have inside jokes and gallows humor. You have all kinds of things you laugh at, but as soon as you tell somebody, the joke falls flat because they don't know the context of it. ~ Bruce Campbell

Nothing like an arcane literary debate with your tyrannical master while you pass the time leading to your execution. ~ Elizabeth Wein

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

SPOILER ALERT: We all die in the end. ~ Stewart Stafford

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

New Orleanians knew how to turn deprivation into an asset; they had the best gallows humor going, they danced at funerals, they insisted on prevailing. ~ Tom Piazza

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

Any port in a storm. ~ Michael J. Tougias

Men die. It's practically what they're for. ~ Catherynne M Valente

We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything. ~ Terry Pratchett

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

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

Life is warped. I'm just in sync. ~ Margaret Atwood

I'm going to marry Prince William! I'll get all Kate Middleton's cute coats! ~ Claudia Gray

It's better to have loved and lost than to be nagged about buying a damn anniversary gift every year. ~ Joey Green

Sorry to hear about your Dad."
He shrugged. "He was seventy, and we always told him fast food would kill him."
"Heart attack?"
"He was hit by a Pizza Express truck. ~ J.A. Konrath

I asked my interior designer to give me something appropriate for defiling virgins. ~ Nicki Elson

The woman spoke with a heavy western North Carolina accent, which I used to discredit her authority. Here was a person for whom the word 'pen' had two syllables. He people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready
so who was she to advise me on anything? ~ David Sedaris

I touched my scalp where Sula had wrapped the cloth. It still burned, but it made me feel important. I'd been wounded in combat. Anyone could break a leg or dislocate a sholder, but how many people get shot? I could tell by the way Will was looking at me that he was impressed too and not a little bit jealous. I would have quickly traded the head wound, however, for a glass of clean water. ~ Cameron Stracher

Is it white wine? Red tastes like vinegar.'

'Of course it's white wine, I'm Japanese. ~ Natasha Pulley

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it. ~ Mae West

How about "diamonds are a girl's best friends"? Nope. It should be switched around and pointed out, instead, that your best friends are diamonds. ~ Gina Barreca

People like us run the world not just by chance but because we're the only ones capable of doing it. We know your flaws. We know you better than you know yourselves. Our sense of honor compels us to take command, to guide the weak through times as dark as these. And our sense of humor compels us to enjoy it. ~ Nathan M. Farrugia

Its a flash drive." When his only answer was a blank stare, I continued. "It holds information from a computer." He took the drive from me giving it a hard shake. When nothing came out, he proceded to tap it against the edge of the windowsill.
"How do we get the information out?" - Kale and Deznee - Touch ~ Jus Accardo

The danger to power is obsession - power junkies. You need a very strong mind and humor to balance yourself. If you don't, you will get shredded. ~ Frederick Lenz

Bah! Doesn't matter. Don't want him for our Ayah. She should marry within her kind, a good Chinese boy - "
Mari had to smile. Mr. Hsu rarely took to foreigners, and this was yet another proof of how easy it was for Ayah to worm her way into people's hearts. She was just so ... sweet. Even when she was also so freaking stubborn, she was just too sweet about it.
"You do remember she's American, right?" Mari teased.
"No," Mr. Hsu snapped, "I don't." He ended the call. ~ Marian Tee

When the bishop farted we were amused to hear about it. Should the ploughboy find treasure we must be told. But when the ploughboy farts ... er ... keep it to yourself. ~ Kingsley Amis

People with a sense of humor tend to be less egocentric and more realistic in their view of the world and more humble in moments of success and less defeated in times of travail. ~ Bob Newhart

He hated YouTube. He wishes it would die of mad cow disease. ~ Andrea Speed

You have no idea how crazy I am, I should be wearing yellow Caution tape, I'm that bonkers. ~ Robin Benway

Don't look at his groin. Don't look at his groin. Don't mention that he doesn't have a vagina, so 'we' is bullshit. This is not the time to mention your pet peeve about expectant fathers talking how 'we' are having a baby. Don't. Don't. ~ MaryJanice Davidson

What the fuck does he think he's doing anyway? And when has running around in a figure eight ever helped anyone? ~ C.K. Kelly Martin

Good to meet you, Patrick," Will said. "And thank you for the ... advice."
"Oh, just trying to help my girlfriend get the best out of her job," he said. "That's all." There was a definite emphasis on the word my.
"Well, you're a lucky man," Will said, as Nathan began to steer him out. "She certainly gives a good bed bath." The words came out so quickly that the door was closed before Patrick even realized what he had said. ~ Jojo Moyes

Has he written to you?'
'He writes frequently.'
'Shew me his letters this instant, I order you'; and M. de Renal added six feet to his stature. ~ Stendhal

It's a bit burned," my mother would say apologetically at every meal, presenting you with a piece of meat that looked like something - a much-loved pet perhaps - salvaged from a tragic house fire. "But I think I scraped off most of the burned part," she would add, overlooking that this included every bit of it that had once been flesh.
Happily, all this suited my father. His palate only responded to two tastes - burned and ice cream - so everything suited him so long as it was sufficiently dark and not too startlingly flavorful. Theirs truly was a marriage made in heaven, for no one could burn food like my mother or eat it like my dad. ~ Bill Bryson

Because - oh shut up laughing, you two - because they've just been turned down by girls they asked to the ball! ~ J.K. Rowling

Humor is the opposite of all self-admiration and self-praise. ~ Karl Barth

I possess everyone who sleeps in the motor court, roam their memories, and embed recurrent nightmares that will destroy their sleep for weeks after I've departed them."
"I'd prefer a free continental breakfast. ~ Dean Koontz

She'd run over Dankyo in an instant to get to Theo. Be a darn big bump in the road, but she'd do it. ~ Cari Silverwood

BE CAREFUL, OR BE ROADKILL! ~ Bill Watterson

Ildiko had been tempted more than a few times to cross her eyes and watch their reaction.
"Don't even think about it, wife. You'll notice half of them are sharpening or cleaning their weapons. All I need is for someone to inadvertently slice themselves open because you startled them. ~ Grace Draven

Always walk as if you're running late, it's healthier. ~ Benny Bellamacina

I come from a long ago era where men could be men and stereotypical humor didn't offend anybody. ~ Rush Limbaugh

It's no good choosing your first husband from a school for evil geniuses. Much too difficult to kill. ~ Gail Carriger