#gallows

Men die. It's practically what they're for. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#gallows-humor #death

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

#humor #humour #beauty

A lost election can have the jolt of a drop through the gallows door, leading to a dark night of the soul in which the future presses down like a cloud that will never lift. ↗

— James Wolcott

#dark #door #down #drop #election

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we have committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows. ↗

— Paul Eldridge

#brought #committed #crimes #escape #few

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

#gallows-humor #prisoner #proposal #humor

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

#humor #humor

We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#gallows-humor #humor #laughing #death

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

#gallows-humor #humor #pique #death

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

#humor #science #humor

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

— Elizabeth Wein

#humor