Being Better Off Dead Quotes & Sayings

If my children will live a better life than I did by my getting brain damage, by my being brain dead, then let it be. — Mike Tyson

Between a dead-hero and a living-no one, always prefer the latter, always prefer the life! Being no one is infinitely better than being dead! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god i'm glad i'm dead because death is always better than dishonor? did they say i'm glad i died to make the world safe for democracy? did they say i like death better than losing liberty? did any of them ever say it's good to think i got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? did any of them ever say look at me i'm dead but i died for decency and that's better than being alive? did any of them ever say here i am i've been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it's wonderful to die for your native land? did any of them say hurray i died for womanhood and i'm happy see how i sing even though my mouth is choked with worms? — Dalton Trumbo

I launched into a graceful ninja-like front roll, then stood my ground to face the monstrous heathen, fearless in my determination to vanquish the deadly foe.
Nah, just kidding. I bolted, discretion being the better part of not getting dead. — A&E Kirk

Still I think about him more than I don't. I'm I'm careful, I think about him all the time. What would it take to return to the ease of feeling safe and appreciated? The way I did with him. It would take, I decide, being 20. Better to think about my dead sister than a man whose kiss I will remember forever. Even if he vanishes as completely as Rebecca has. — Garret Freymann-Weyr

It's better being crazy because if you don't like the way it is here then you can have dreams. And if you don't like the dreams, then they come and give you shots and you don't feel anything anyway and you just drift around. Dead. Half-dead. Alive but like you're dead. You just drift around alive, but dead. And it all seems the same after a while. — Torey L. Hayden

The way health care is funded in the U.S. is not sustainable. People are being kept alive who are probably better off dead. The cost of health care is too high, and you don't get much for it - it's twice as high in the U.S. as elsewhere, and it's because of the middlemen. — Richard J. Roberts

One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that Voyages in China that the Chinese say a white man smells like a corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea. Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, fire, water. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But being brought back to life no. Can't bury in the air however. Out of a flying machine. Wonder — James Joyce

To this day, we get letters at Alternative Tentacles from young teenagers who hide their Dead Kennedys albums behind their mirror or in the mattress of their bed. Wouldn't it be better if the parents just discussed this with the kids instead of creating this culture of sneaking and dishonesty within the family? The moral of the story being, you don't hide reality from your kids because then they grow up to be smarter, more aware adults. — Jello Biafra

Lucien sighed as he looked me over. "Do you ever stop being so serious and dull?" "Do you ever stop being such a prick?" I snapped back. Dead - really, truly, I should have been dead for that. But Lucien grinned at me. "Much better." Alis, it seemed, had not been wrong. — Sarah J. Maas

In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people's home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm! — Woody Allen

To them I'm simply an object from the past that they wish will disappear Then why do I exist? Why am I alive? When I thought about this I could find no answer. But as you live you need a reason otherwise it's the same as being dead, I then came to this conclusion I exist to kill every human besides myself. Fighting only for yourself living while only loving yourself If you think that everybody else simply exist to allow you to experience that feeling nothing is better then that world. As long as there are people in this world for me to kill and continue to feel that joy of living my existence will not vanish. — Masashi Kishimoto

I'm kind of comfortable with getting older because it's better than the other option, which is being dead. So I'll take getting older. — George Clooney

Which was better: being alive (if that was the right word) but not remembering anything, or being dead? — Laurie Halse Anderson

Better to be married than dead! — Moliere

A man looketh on his little one as a being of better hope; in himself ambition is dead, but it bath a resurrection in his son. — Martin Farquhar Tupper

She understands all at once, with a small shock, exactly what it is she always needed to tell Harland: being there in person is not the same as watching. You might see things better on television, but you'll never know if you were alive or dead while you watched. — Barbara Kingsolver

Don't fuck around thinking you could have done it better. There is no better. There's just not being dead. — Nick Harkaway

There is no virtue in being uncritical; nor is it a habit to which the young are given. But criticism is only the burying beetle that gets rid of what is dead, and, since the world lives by creative and constructive forces, and not by negation and destruction, it is better to grow up in the company of prophets than of critics. — Richard Livingstone

I wonder if I talk like a dead man. My daughter once came home from school very excited about some lecture -this was years ago, before I died, though just right before- and she said her English teacher had talked about what the dead sound like in Dante. This funny thing about Dante's dead, which is that they know the past, and even the future, but they don't know the present. About the present they have all these questions for Dante. And that somehow is what being alive is, to be suspended in the time. She seemed to feel that really meant something. That and also that the dead know themselves better than the living do. — Rivka Galchen

But it isn't only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It's more than that. People know they are in a society dead or dying. They are refusing emotion because at the end of every emotion are property, money, power. They work and despise their work, and so freeze themselves. They love but know that it's a half-love or a twisted love, and so they freeze themselves.
It is possible that in order to keep love, feeling, tenderness alive, it will be necessary to feel these emotions ambiguously, even for what is false and debased, or for what is still an idea, a shadow in the willed imagination only ... or if what we feel is pain, then we must feel it, acknowledging that the alternative is death. Better anything than the shrewd, the calculated, the non-committal, the refusal of giving for fear of the consequences ... — Doris Lessing

It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean one thinks of it like being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference, shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never know you were in a box would you? ... Even taking into account the fact that you're dead, it isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead, really. Ask yourself, if I asked you straight off
I'm going to stuff you in this box now would you rather be alive or dead? Naturally you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all. — Tom Stoppard

The dead, being wiser than the living, know freedom is always better than revenge. — Michael G. Williams

Whatever she is now she's better than she was," said Bedloe. "Being dead is better than being dull, being dead is better than not being aware. — Ray Bradbury

It is fun to be alive. It's a hell of a lot better than being dead. — Joe Strummer

Tomorrow, I am fifty-two years old. And I want to say unequivocally that I am very happy to be alive, that being alive is better than being dead. And if I have just one wish it is this: that you work with all your might and love with all your heart and never lose hope and never give up. — Betsy Lerner

Someone is going to tell you to get use to this. That feeling of being scared and sad. They're going to say it'll be better when you learn to ignore it. Don't listen to them. Hold on to it, remember it ... Don't let yourself forget it. It's too easy to lose.
-Carl Grimes — Robert Kirkman

Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will's foot, which could only flop in a pain-filled sideways heave as if it were horribly injured. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it.
'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys.
'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.'
'If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.'
'But if it's in pain?' said Tialys.
'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.'
They moved on. — Philip Pullman

Oh, glorious Art!" thus mused the enthusiastic painter, as he trod the street. "Thou art the image of the Creator's own. The innumerable forms that wander in nothingness start into being at thy beck. The dead live again. Thou recallest them to their old scenes, and givest their gray shadows the lustre of a better life, at once earthly and immortal. Thou snatchest back the fleeing moments of History. With thee, there is no Past; for at thy touch, all that is great becomes forever present; and illustrious men live through long ages in the visible performance of the very deeds which made them what they are. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

We should never forget that our time is among the talents for which we must give account at the judgment of God. Time being not the least precious of these, will be required with a strictness proportionate to its value. Let us tremble at this idea, as well we may. We must be tried not only for what we have done - but for what we had time to do, yet neglected to do it. Not only for the hours spent in sin - but for those wasted in idleness. Let us beware of that mode of spending time which some call killing it, for this murder,like others, will not always be concealed - the hours destroyed in secret will appear when we least expect it, to the unspeakable terror and amazement of our souls - they arise from the dead, and fly away to heaven, where they might have carried better news, and there tell sad tales of us, which we shall be sure to hear of again, when we hold up our hands at the bar, and they shall come as so many swift witnesses against us! — John Angell James

Then I take a dump. Feel better. Take off my clothes and step into the pool. Ice water. But great. I walk along toward the deep end of the pool, the water rising inch by inch, chilling me. Then I plunge below the water. It's restful. The world doesn't know where I am. I come up, swim to the far edge, find the ledge, sit there. It must be about the 9th or 10th race. The horses are still running. I plunge again into the water, being aware of my stupid whiteness, of my age hanging onto me like a leech. Still, it's OK. I should have been dead 40 years ago. I rise to the top, swim to the far edge, get out. — Charles Bukowski

I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I'm not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like "I'm shit and the world'd be better off without poor me" type that says that but also imagines what everybody'll say at their funeral. I've met types like that on wards. Poor-me-I-hate-me-punish-me-come-to-my-funeral. Then they show you a 20 X 25 glossy of their dead cat. It's all self-pity bullshit. It's bullshit. I didn't have any special grudges. I didn't fail an exam or get dumped by anybody. All these types. Hurt themselves. I didn't want to especially hurt myself. Or like punish. I don't hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all. I wanted to just stop being conscious. I'm a whole different type. I wanted to stop feeling this way. If I could have just put myself in a really long coma I would have done that. Or given myself shock I would have done that. Instead. — David Foster Wallace

What fits your busy schedule better, exercising one hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day? — Randy Glasbergen

Far from being dead, physical media has years of life left and must be preserved because there is no better alternative. — Ridley Scott

Blue draped an arm over his cold neck. There wasn't really anything to say to make being dead better. — Maggie Stiefvater

They didn't know being dead is only being asleep, and you're bound to wake up somewhere or other, either where you go to sleep or some better place. — E. Nesbit

If he is anything other than a total gentleman, I'm going to gouge his eyes out."
"So you're into it."
"Withholding judgment! When can I see you?"
"Certainly not until you finish An Imperial Affliction." I enjoyed being coy.
"Then I'd better hang up and start reading."
"You'd better," I said, and the line clicked dead without another word.
Flirting was new to me, but I liked it. — John Green

A process of aging had taken place in him that was so rapid and critical that soon he was being treated as one of those useless great-grandfathers who wander about the bedroom like shades, dragging their feet, remembering better times aloud, and whom no one bother about or remembers really until the morning they find them dead in their bed. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

We all have things inside ourselves we can't kill,' I say, not sure which part of me would be better off dead: this monster self, or the normal one who wants nothing more than a little place on a little planet with his friends, the one who will have to live with being a killer. — Holly Black

I don't believe in funerals.

Funerals aren't for the dead. The dead are gone. They couldn't care less.

Funerals are for the living.

They're for the people trying to feel better about the things they could have said, the things they could have done for the dead while they were still alive.

The dead don't give a damn.

The dead couldn't care less about what's being said to them, about them.

Hell, they're dead.

The dead know the living aren't there for them, but for themselves. To feel better, to feel less guilty, less regretful, to feel loved, better appreciated by all the other living people who, like them, should have paid attention to the dead while it still mattered, while they were still alive.

So screw funerals.

Forget the dead.

Tend to the living.

Before it's too late.

Before they're dead — Lionel Fisher

Sometimes I have to act crazy to handle the crazies. Trying to be normal near the crazies makes me as crazy as them. The more I push reason and logic on them, the more they pervert it and use it against me, the angrier they make me feel. It's much easier to pretend they're ghosts talking to the wind, and ignore them as if they weren't really human. My mood improves, my self-esteem is better and I feel happier. On another hand, maybe I'm just being realistic here, because you can't really talk to the dead. That's what people without respect or empathy are; dead in the brain; just walking bodies without a soul. — Robin Sacredfire

Everybody agrees that a future in which you are dead is a very bad thing, and that it isn't made any better by your not being around to notice how bad it is. — David Papineau