Better Off Dead Quotes & Sayings

I click on the deaths and read the names carefully, memorising them. Because here's the simple truth - if I hadn't taken the ship off Phydus, people like ***** and ******* would still be alive. And while I could say that a shorter life with feelings is better than a longer life without, the dead can't tell me their side. [p.88] — Beth Revis

Better a live coward than a dead hero, I've always believed. Sure people will still sing about dead heroes from time to time, but aside from that they get little attention. Unless they manage to get a holiday named after them. Even then, it's not like they get to enjoy the day off. — Bill Allen

Safe! All I wanted to do was keep them safe. How do you protect your brothers at eight-fucking-teen? How do you make enough money, get enough respect to do that? I wasn't smart, Eve. I'm a big, dumb fucking bastard. I couldn't even get a job as a bagger at the A&P. I wanted to make their lives worth living. That's what they'd done for me - made my life worth living. They're my family. I can't ... I just can't." Beckett pounded his chest.
"They would've been better off without me," he continued. "Blake would still be homeless, but Cole made his own damn way. But I wanted in. I wanted to belong. I was too fucking selfish to walk away. I should have walked away. But I didn't and now - " Beckett choked on a deep, angry sob. "Now, they're paying for it. All my stupid decisions. They'll die tonight. They'll both die, and I can't stop it. I can't plug it with money. I can't bring them back from the dead, even if I act tough or kill more people. — Debra Anastasia

could make them laugh, and although he couldn't make them like him, that was absolutely okay. They were dead-enders headed for dead-end marriages and dead-end jobs. They would raise dead-end kids and dandle dead-end grandkids before coming to their own dead ends in dead-end hospitals and nursing homes, rocketing off into darkness believing they had lived the American Dream and Jesus would meet them at the gates of heaven with the Welcome Wagon. Morris was meant for better things. He just didn't know what they were. — Stephen King

They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now before I popped off. — Doris Lessing

He questioned us one after the other. Each one of his questions - all of them very simple: Who were we? Why had we come? - caught us completely off our guard and seemed to probe our very insides. Who are you? Who am I? We could not answer him as we could a police official or a customs inspector. Give one's name and profession? What does that mean? But *who* are you? And *what* are you? The words we uttered - we had none better - were worthless, repugnant and grotesque as dead things. We realized that with the guides of Mount Analogue, we could no longer get away with just words. — Rene Daumal

If a man must make excuses for himself, continually argue with himself that he is a man, then he is better off dead. — Elmore Leonard

Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want. — Carol Ann Duffy

Even the suicide desires his own good: he wrongly imagines that he would be better off dead. The moral problem is not that we love ourselves but that we love ourselves the wrong way. — J. Budziszewski

Ugh! Why couldn't anyone ever trust her? She wasn't a two-year-old. If her kindness killed her, then she was better off dead than living a cold, unfeeling life where she misered up all her feelings and possessions.' (Sunshine) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

We would all be better off dead, useless eaters of the lotus that we are. — Michael Moorcock

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

You interrogated a man at Hades's compound a year ago. I heard what you did to him. I can't have dead prisoners here; we have to be better than that." "I didn't kill him," I objected, remembering the murderous bastard who'd tried to kill Hades before he'd been caught. Unfortunately we hadn't stopped him from killing his own wife and children. "You took his hands. You know he killed himself in our jail?" "Yeah, well, I'm not going to kill anyone. Just talk. They wanted to kill me back in Southampton, now they want to take me to talk. I'd like to know why. And I heard your prisoner died by getting into a fight with another prisoner." "He walked up to a cave troll and kicked him. The troll tore his head off and threw it fifty feet away. What would you call that?" "Suicide by troll. That's new. — Steve McHugh

Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn. — Curtis Armstrong

Because I made a promise. A promise to my friend that I would see her kingdom freed." She shoved her scarred palm into his face. "I made an unbreakable vow. And you and Maeve - all you gods-damned bastards - are getting in the way of that." She went off down the hillside again. He followed.
"And what of your own people? What of your own kingdom?"
"They are better off without me, just as you said."
His tattoo scrunched as he snarled. "So you'd save another land, but not yours. Why can't your friend save her own kingdom?"
"Because she is dead!" She screamed the last word so loudly it burned in her throat. "Because she is dead, and I am left with my worthless life!"
He merely stared at her with that animal stillness. When she walked away, he didn't come after her. — Sarah J. Maas

Man is better off without the confusion and fear of psychic experience and his progress will be faster.' If telepathy ever becomes a possibility he was not sure it would be a good thing, ' ... for it may put us back in contact with the spirits of the dead and progress does not lie in that direction. — H.R. Wakefield

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

What are you doing?"
"Activating it."
"Uh ... No you're not." I jerk my hand away. "You're not activating anything until I get some answers."
"Yeah, I am. If I don't activate it, it explodes." He sounds dead serious.
"For real?"
He doesn't answer, and that pisses me off. But I can't be certain it isn't for real, and since I'm fond of having a hand at the end of my arm, I offer my wrist. He finishes running his fingers over the screen.
I change direction and ask, "Would the bracelet really have exploded if you didn't activate it?"
There's a slight pause that makes me think I've surprised him by shifting topics. Good. Better that I have him on his toes than he have me on mine.
"No," he says, and I think the corners of his mouth twitch in the hint if a smile. — Eve Silver

I can't - Kestrel, you must understand that I would never claim you. Calling you a prize - my prize - it was only words. But it worked. Cheat won't harm you, I swear that he won't, but you must ... hide yourself a little. Help a little. Just tell us how much time we have before the battle. Give him a reason to decide you're not better off dead. Swallow your pride."
"Maybe it's not as easy for me as it is for you."
He wheeled on her. "It's not easy for me," "You know that it's not. What do you think I have had to swallow these past ten years? What do you think I have had to do to survive?"
"Truly," she said, "I haven't the faintest interest. You may tell your sad story to someone else."
He flinched as if slapped. His voice came low: "You can make people feel so small. — Marie Rutkoski

It was difficult for Rumfoord to take Billy seriously, since Rumfoord had so long considered Billy a repulsive non-person who would be much better off dead. Now, with Billy speaking clearly and to the point, Rumfoord's ears wanted to treat the words as a foreign language that was not worth learning. "What did he say?" said Rumfoord. Lily had to serve as an interpreter. "He said he was there," she explained. "He was where?" "I don't know," said Lily. "Where were you?" she asked Billy. "Dresden," said Billy. — Kurt Vonnegut

If the leader is a good man he will be liked and if he's not, he won't, and if he is a good man and a bad leader then he is better off dead. — Bernard Cornwell

Other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of a cupboard. — John Boyne

There's a lot of people saying we'd be better off dead. I don't feel like a satan but I guess I am ... keep on rockin' the free world. — Neil Young

The dead know nothing, but they are better off than fools. — Matshona Dhliwayo

I can't say I'm overwhelmed with surprise. I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off. — Doris Lessing

I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second I'd be normal. Then came the dim awareness of something off, out of place. Then the truth came crashing down and that was it for the rest of the day. Sunlight was reproof. Shouldn't I feel better than I had in the dead of night. — Francine Prose

Crazy is such a misunderstood term. I like to think that I march to the beat of my own drummer. — Eva Sloan

Great wealth can make a man no happier than moderate means, unless he has the luck to continue in propsperity to the end. Many very rich men have been unfortunate, and many with a modest competence have had good luck. The former are better off than the latter in two respects only, whereas the poor but lucky man has the advantage in many ways; for though the rich have the means to satisfy their appetites and to bear calamities, and the poor have not, the poor, if they are lucky, are more likely to keep clear of trouble, and will have besides the blessings of a sound body, health, freedom from trouble, fine children, and good looks.
Now if a man thus favoured died as he has lived, he will be just the one you are looking for: the only sort of person who deserves to be called happy. But mark this: until he is dead, keep the word "happy" in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but only lucky. — Herodotus

But hey, what's life without a little adversity?
That had to have been the fakest attempt at optimism since my fourth grade teacher tried reasoning that we were better off without the dead kids in our class because it'd mean more turns on the playground swings for the rest of us. — Alexandra Bracken

Childhood is not dead. Children were worse off when we were hunter-gatherers; they were threatened in medieval times and exploited during the Industrial Revolution. Was it any better in the time of Charles Kingsley or Charles Dickens? — Robert Winston

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

Wes didn't think Tony was a hypocrite exactly
he knew why his brother felt obliged to warn him off. But it was clear that Tony didn't have any better ideas or he would've made those moves himself. — Wes Moore

Dark thought started to slip into my mind, despite all my efforts to keep them out. What was the use of anything? We were born, we lived a few years, grew old, and then died. What was the point of it all? All those people in the County and the wide world beyond, living their short little lives before going to the grave. What was it all for? My dad was dead. He'd worked hard all his life, but the journey of his life had had only one destination: the grave. That's where we were all heading. into the grave. Into the soil, to be eaten by worms. Poor Billy Bradley had been the Spook's apprentice before me. He'd had his fingers bitten off by a boggat and had died of shock and loss of blood. And where was he now? In a grave. Not even in a churchyard. He was buried outside because the Church considered him no better than a malevolent witch. That would be my fate too. A grave in unhallowed ground. — Joseph Delaney

In fact, I suspect that our only hope is disaster. Cruel tho' it is to say it, there has got to be a vast die-off in the human population
likely including us and our families
before the survivors find themselves in a world where a new and humble and 'religious' adaptation with nature is possible.
Disaster is not necessary; the better world could be achieved through reason and common sense and a sense of fellowship
but most of the present human world is dead set against us. Thus I was forced to the disagreeable resolutions (not solutions) which I attempted to sketch out in the novel 'Good News.' The title is of course deliberately ambiguous. — Edward Abbey

Cory wondered if maybe some people were better off dead. When you're dead you don't have to face the horrors of life, whether it's striving to be the best, dealing with something bad you or somebody else did, dealing with someone's death or anything. Most people, if not everyone, had a reason to die. Dead people can't even be upset about dying because they're dead. — Jesse Haubert

Flea brain, got a hole in her head. If she wasn't good looking, she'd be better off dead. — Gene Vincent

An unlucky rich man is more capable of satisfying his desires and of riding out disaster when it strikes, but a lucky man is better off than him ... He is the one who deserves to be described as happy. But until he is dead, you had better refrain from calling him happy, and just call him fortunate. — Solon

To be always intending to make a new and better life but never to find time to set about it is as to put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day to the next until you're dead. — Og Mandino

Beautiful

I am beautiful inside and out
I am beautiful without a doubt
So I'll stop listening to the voices in my head
The ones telling me I'm better off dead
I am smart and will make it far
I will be someone I will be a star
I will make it just to prove you wrong
I will let my life go on
I will not dwell on what you said
I will forget what you did
I am thin I am not fat
I will no longer tell myself that
I am kind and loving to those who need it the most
I will see you simply as only a ghost
I am courageous I will let nothing get in my way
I am all these wonderful things each and every day — Various

She had hit rock-bottom. She had given a blow job to a man who for all intents and purposes, was a bum. He had smelled so bad, she forced him to spray on some of the perfume she always carried in her purse. Her favorite perfume. After tonight, she was quitting. Yeah, she'd have to go back home with her two kids, grovel to her mama and work a dead-end job, but anything was better than getting down on your knees to give a guy as disgusting as Lenny a one-off. — A.T. Hicks

If this was the best wine that Jim and Nora could afford or, worse, if this was their idea of a good wine - well, sadly, then they were better off dead. — Dean Koontz

Am I better off living through death,
Or dying an invisible ghost?
Am I better off speaking in silence,
Or screaming so loud no one will hear?
I fake a smile,
But it's killed by you,
I fake a soul,
But that dies, too.
So I fake my life,
What else can I do?
Take me in, spit me out,
And I scream and scream and shout,
But you can't hear my pain,
My blood's nothing but a worthless stain.
I fake a smile,
But it's killed by you.
I fake a soul,
But that dies, too.
So I fake my life,
What else can I do?
And if one day I wake up gone,
Maybe people will see through,
But until then the lies will rule.
And sometimes I think
I'm better off dead,
But then I realize
I already am. — Olivia Rivers

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

When we see celebrities who fall victim to depression's lies we think to ourselves, "How in the world could they have killed themselves? They had everything." But they didn't. They didn't have a cure for an illness that convinced them they were better off dead. — Jenny Lawson

Life's for the living, so live it, or you're better off dead. — Passenger

The sad truths I've been taught by the families of the dead are these: seeing is believing; knowing is better than not knowing; to name the hurt returns a kind of comfort; the grief ignored will never go away. For those whose sons and daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers and friends went off alive and never did return, the worst that can happen has already happened. The light and air of what is known, however difficult, is better than the dark. The facts of death, like the facts of life, are required learning. — Thomas Lynch

Excerpted From Chapter One
I decided staying put in the alley was preferable to keeping the dead guy company, so I went outside and lit a Lucky Strike. The night air had gotten damper and chillier during the short time I was in the warehouse, or maybe it was just me.
Wisps of lacy fog were now sinking into the alley, and a skulking cat in search of dinner moved slowly along the opposite wall until he noticed me. He scurried off in a furry blur, eager to be far away from the evil invading his domain. The cat had better sense than me and I wished I could follow his example. — H.P. Oliver

Vadim swallowed, felt his throat too tight to move, then, still staring at the bottle, smelling the desert and Dan, and himself, his hand reached to his side, opened the holster of the pistol. Took out the mag, took the bullet from the chamber, clicked the mag in place again, rolled the bullet between his fingers.
He looked at Dan, sideways, saw the man stare at him, all eyes, dark eyes, and the way the pale desert moon made his face a place of shadows.
He reached for Dan's hand, opened the fingers and placed the bullet into the palm.
"This is the bullet you'll use to kill me if I walk away again." Because if I walk away again, I'll be in so much pain I'm better off dead anyway. — Aleksandr Voinov

You realize we can't go back to Sheridan."

"I know."

"Have to keep heading southwest now, and I don't know anything about the area. We'll probably get lost or walk into a road and a patrol."

"Well"-Hadrian looked down at Royce's side-"you're bleeding again, and I think I am, too, so the good news is we'll likely die before morning. Still, I suppose it could be worse."

"How?"

"They could have caught us at the tavern, or we could have drowned in that river."

"Either way we'd be dead. At this point I'm inclined to see that as better off."

"Anything can always be worse," Hadrian assured him.

They lay staring up at the sky and watching clouds blot out the stars. Royce heard it before he felt it. A distant patter on the blades of grass along the hillside. He turned once more to Hadrian. "I'm really starting to hate you. — Michael J. Sullivan

You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead — Ray Bradbury

I was beginning to agree with the thesis that some truths were better off dead.
And buried. — Simona Panova

Never ask an elf for help; they might decide your better off dead, eh? (Orik) (Eldest) (Page 207) — Christopher Paolini

If your imaginary friends are at all like mine, they're better off dead. — Susan Spann

The thing about exploring is that you have to know whether the thing you've found is worth finding. Some things are just sitting there, minding their own business, waiting to be discovered. Like America. And other things are probably better off left alone. Like a dead mouse at the back of the cupboard. — John Boyne

Love's more than holding hands and going to dances. It's two people who struggle to live, even when they should maybe both be dead. When one of them would be better off dead. — Shaun Hutchinson

You want to know whether we're better off? I've got a little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive! Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive! — Joe Biden

We're all about trying to play better every night, not just singing hit songs ... we ad lib, and every night there's jamming .. it's almost like the Grateful Dead meets Buck Owens some nights, because we'll go off on little adventures and sometimes we do crash the bus! ... — Brad Paisley

First, it's used."
"Now look here," Teddy Jo growled. "It's not a Cadillac. It's a body freezer. The value doesn't drop because you drive it off the lot."
"I don't know what sort of bodies you stuck in there, Teddy. You might have put a leucrocuta in there. Those things stink."
"It's not like the dead gonna care. They can't smell shit, and they themselves ain't gonna get to smelling any better. — Ilona Andrews

When you kill someone by chopping off their head, rolling 'em up in a carpet and burning it, you'd better make sure they're dead! — Colin Mochrie

So, it becomes the devil's business to keep the Christian's spirit imprisoned. He knows that the believing and justified Christian has been raised up out of the grave of his sins. From that point on, Satan works that much harder to keep us bound and gagged, in our own grave clothes. He knows that if we continue in this kind of bondage ... we are not much better off than when we were spiritually dead. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

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

Who said death is dead? He's fully alive, traveling around the world, throwing shadows and soaking in the sun. Visiting the young and old; placing bets and dicing regrets, for the worse or a better off place. — Anthony Liccione

There were times that Nathan felt the world would be better off if he were dead. It seemed to him that it would be penance for his sins. — Belinda G. Buchanan

Drink this."
"Um, how 'bout no," I replied, staring at the dark green contents. Whatever the liquid was, it smelled like pine trees and dirt, and seeing how this woman was Izzy's mom, I figured it was poisoned.
But Aislinn just shrugged. "Don't, then. No skin off my nose if your head hurts."
"It's okay," Mom said, never taking her eyes off Aislinn. "It'll make you feel better."
"By making me dead?" I asked. "I mean, I'm sure that would make my headache go away, but that's a heck of a side effect."
"Sophie," Mom murmured, a warning tone in her voice.
But Aislinn just regarded me shrewdly, a tiny smile playing on her lips. "She's got a mouth on her, that's for sure," she said. Her eyes flicked to Mom. "Must've gotten that from him. You were always quiet. — Rachel Hawkins

Heterosexual relationships seem to lead only to marriage, and for most poor dumb brainwashed women marriage is the climactic experience. For men, marriage is a matter of efficient logistics: the male gets his food, bed, laundry, TV, pussy, offspring and creature comforts all under one roof, where he doesn't have to dissipate his psychic energy thinking about them too much - then he is free to go out and fight the battles of life, which is what existence is all about.
But for a woman, marriage is surrender. Marriage is when a girl gives up the fight, walks off the battlefield and from then on leaves the truly interesting and significant action to her husband, who has bargained to 'take care' of her. What a sad bum deal.
Women live longer than men because they really haven't been living. Better blue-in-the-face dead of a heart attack at fifty than a healthy seventy-year old widow who hasn't had a piece of life's action since girlhood. — Tom Robbins

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

Here look at me. I'm Charlie, the son you wrote off the books? Not that I blame you for it, but here I am, all fixed up better than ever. Test me. Ask me questions. I speak twenty languages, living and dead; I'm a mathematical whiz, and I'm writing a piano concerto that will make them remember me long after I'm gone. — Daniel Keyes

When I think of highly plotted novels I think of detective fiction or mystery fiction, the kind of work that always produces a few dead bodies. But these bodies are basically plot points, not worked-out characters. The book's plot either moves inexorably toward a dead body of flows directly from it, and the more artificial the situation the better. Readers can play off their fears by encountering the death experience in a superficial way. A mystery novel localizes the awesome force of the real death outside the book, winds it tightly in a plot, makes it less fearful by containing it in a kind of game format. [from an interview with DeCurtis] — Don DeLillo