Bored To Death Quotes & Sayings

He is dead and I, the self serving coward that I am, still live. Life is not fair. There is no pattern. People die at random. Something everyone knows, but no one truly believes. They think that when it comes to them there will be a lesson, a meaning, a story worth telling. That death will come to them as a dread scholar, a fell knight, a terrible emperor.
Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit. — Joe Abercrombie

Every day the words that Keep-on-Dancin' and the Gypsy imparted to me - theories, observations, advice and warnings - are substantiated and acquire deeper meaning.

'It's not for nothing there are so many bistrots in Paris,' Keep-on-Dancin' asserted. 'The reason so many people are always crowded into them isn't so much they go there to drink but to meet up, congregate, come together, comfort each other. Yes, comfort each other: people are bored the whole time, and they're scared, scared of loneliness and boredom. And they all carry around in their heart of hearts their own pet little arch-fear: fear of death, no matter how devil-may-care they might appear to be. They'd do anything to avoid thinking about it. Don't forget, it's with that fear all temples and churches were built. So in cities like this, where forty different races mingle together, everyone can always find something to say to each other. — Jacques Yonnet

The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was Creation divided by Destruction was as close as one could come to definition. But the puny of soul, the dull of wit, weren't content with that. They wanted to hang a face on the Divine. They went so far as to attribute petty human emotions (anger, jealousy, etc) to it, not stopping to realize that if God were a being, even a supreme being, our prayers would have bored him to death long ago. — Tom Robbins

I cannot stand superheroes. I do not understand any of its appeal. It has just bored me to death since I was a little kid. — Roz Chast

It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play. That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem for us. We feel justified in being annoyed with everything. We feel justified in denigrating ourselves or in feeling that we are more clever than other people. Self-importance hurts us, limiting us to the narrow world of our likes and dislikes. We end up bored to death with ourselves and our world. We end up never satisfied. — Pema Chodron

Lady Dedlock is always the same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. — Charles Dickens

Do you wanna play? Everyone's dead, so I got bored. Did you come to play with me?
Wrath — Hiromu Arakawa

I think about dying but I dont want to die. Not even close. In fact my problem is the complete opposite. I want to live, I want to escape. I feel trapped and bored and claustrophobic. There's so much to see and so much to do but I somehow still find myself doing nothing at all. I'm still here in this metaphorical bubble of existence and I can't quite figure out what the hell I'm doing or how to get out of it. — Matty Healy

Yes, she had changed her mind after sixty years and she would like to see George. I want you to find George. Find him and be sure to tell him I forgot him. I want him to know I had my husband just the same and my children and my house like any other woman. A good house too and a good husband that I loved and fine children out of him. Better than I had hoped for even. Tell him I was given back everything he took away and more. Oh, no, oh, God, no, there was something else besides the house and the man and the children. Oh, surely they were not all? What was it? Something not given back... Her breath crowded down under her ribs and grew into a monstrous frightening shape with cutting edges; it bored up into her head, and the agony was unbelievable: Yes, John, get the Doctor now, no more talk, the time has come. — Katherine Anne Porter

The trouble with creative work: Sometimes by the time people catch on to what's valuable about what you do, you're either a) bored to death with it, or b) dead. You can't go looking for validation from external sources. Once you put your work into the world, you have no control over the way people will react to it. — Austin Kleon

We aspire to omniscience, but should we ever actually become omniscient what would be the point in continuing to exist? The game would be over and done. No mystery would be left to lend our lives a mystique, and without this mystique everything we do would be reduced to numbers we could look up in a computer file and have no need to puzzle over. We would be victorious . . . and bored to death. Everything having to do with humanity and nonhumanity would hit a wall and come to a stop. We seem to have set out on an expedition whose success would be our ruin. The only way out, perhaps, would be to fashion creatures less knowing than ourselves and exist through them. What humiliation, what pathos that we should ever end up as gods. Is there nothing that can bring us into reconciliation with the cancer of existence? — Thomas Ligotti

I knew there was evil in the world. Death and taxes were all necessary evils.
So was shopping.
"I hate shopping," I muttered.
"Of course you do," Phaelan said. "You're a Benares, [the daughter of a long line of professional thieves]. We're not used to paying for anything." Phaelan was my cousin; he called himself a seafaring businessman. Law enforcement in every major city called him "that damned pirate," or less flattering epithets, none of them repeatable here.
...
"Have you considered something in scarlet leather?" Phaelan mused from beside me.
"Have you considered just painting a bull's eye on my back?" I retorted.
My cousin wasn't with me because he liked shopping. He was by my side because being within five feet of me was a guarantee of getting into trouble of the worst kind. Phaelan hadn't plundered or pillaged anything in weeks. He was bored. So this morning, he was a cocky, swaggering invitation for Trouble to bring it on and do her worst. — Lisa Shearin

We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let's get to work! (He advances towards the heap, stops in his stride.) In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone more, in the midst of nothingness! — Samuel Beckett

I'm bored to death. Perhaps I should pillage one of my neighbors for my own amusement. It seems to work for Drowden. — Kristin Cashore

As the woodpecker taps in a spiral quest
From the root to the top of the tree,
Then flies to another tree,
So have I bored into life to find what lay therein,
And now it is time to die,
And I will fly to another tree. — Sidney Lanier

It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go - let it die away - go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow - and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. — C.S. Lewis

I come from Somalia. We start working young, and we understand that kind of life. I would be bored to death not doing anything creative. — Iman Abdulmajid

There's a story everywhere. Being bored to death someplace is basically a funny proposition. What you have to watch out for is you don't write a boring story about a boring place. — Tim Cahill

I just finished my homework fast, I was bored to death. There wasn't 500 channels so there was a thing for a librarian to teach a kid like me about reading. I started reading early and I read all the time, because I love it. — Harvey Weinstein

I wanted to be bored to death, as good a way to go as any. — Peter De Vries

Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit. He — Joe Abercrombie

I know," he said in almost bored contemplation. "My manners suck. I like to chalk it up to a dissatisfying childhood."
"I'd chalk it up to that narcissistic personality disorder laces with a smidgen of schizophrenia. Your mother would be proud. — Darynda Jones

And while you and the rest of your kind are battling together - year after year - for this special privilege of being 'bored to death,' the 'real girl' that you're asking about, the marvelous girl, the girl with the big, beautiful, unspoken thoughts in her head, the girl with the big, brave, undone deeds in her heart, the girl that stories are made of, the girl whom you call 'improbable' - is moping off alone in some dark, cold corner - or sitting forlornly partnerless against the bleak wall of the ballroom - or hiding shyly up in the dressing-room - waiting to be discovered! — Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Unfortunately they failed to appreciate the best part of you, preferring to lose themselves in the labyrinth of your grosser illusions. Didn't I show our well-behaved audience an angelized version of you? And you saw their reaction. They were bored and just sat in their seats like a bunch of stiffs. Of course, what can you expect? They wanted the death stuff, the pain stuff. All that flashy junk. They wanted cartwheels of agonized passion; somersaults into fires of doom; nosedives, if you will, into the frenzied pageant of vulnerable flesh. They wanted a tangible thrill.
("Drink To Me Only With Labyrinthine Eyes") — Thomas Ligotti

Bored .... nearly to death — Melissa Bank

It struck me that Lee was in many ways our true hero. Lee was the one who did the dirtiest jobs, quietly, without fuss, without going into big emotional scenes. He was so efficient, so reliable, so brave. Whenever we fell short, he made up the gap. I'm not just talking about the red hot moments, when enemy soldiers were shooting at us, when we were within a moment of death. I'm talking about the sourer times too, when we were so tired we could hardly remember to breathe, or we were so bored we'd pick at each other just for something to do, or so distressed we'd wish a soldier would come along and blow us into oblivion with an M16. At all those times Lee stood strong. He was like the Wirrawee grain silo. You could see the grain silo from miles away, tall and reliable. It stood for Wirrawee, and it gave you a safe comforting feeling to know it was there. That was how I'd felt about Lee during the war. — John Marsden

It must be dawn, and the last breath went out of this body on the table - how long before? Irretrievably gone from this world, as dead as though she had lived a thousand years ago. Men have cut the isthmus of Panama and joined the two oceans; they have bored tunnels that run below rivers; built aluminum planes that fly from Frisco to Manila; sent music over the air and photographs over wires; but never, when the heartbeat of their own kind has once stopped, never when the spark of life has fled, have they been able to reanimate the mortal clay with that commonest yet most mysterious of all processes; the vital force. And this man thinks he can - this man alone, out of all the world's teeming billions! ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

The whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death — Murray Leinster

I've been watching 'Game of Thrones,' and I can't wait for 'Bored to Death' to come back, it's one of my faves. — Michelle Forbes

I would rather die than be in the United States Senate. I would be bored to death. Could you imagine me, banging around that chamber with 99 other people, asking for a motion on the amendment in the subcommittee? Forget it ... You'd watch me just walk out and walk right into the Potomac River and drown. That would be it. — Chris Christie

Boredom has been used as a technique, it is a device. In Zen, boredom is used as a device: you are bored to death, and you are not allowed to escape. You are not to go outside, you are not to entertain yourself, you are not to do, you are not to talk, you are not to read novels and detective stories. No thrill. No possibility to escape anywhere. — Rajneesh

Widowhood provided Mama with a higher form of being. In refusing to recover from my father's death she had discovered that her life was endowed with a seriousness her years in the kitchen had denied her. She remained devoted to this seriousness for thirty years. She never tired of it, never grew bored or restless in its company, found new ways to keep alive the interest it deserved and had so undeniably earned. — Vivian Gornick

We spend our entire lives thinking about death. Without that project to divert us, I expect we would all be dreadfully bored. We would have nothing to evade, and nothing to forestall, and nothing to wonder about. Time would have no consequence. — Eleanor Catton

I'd be bored to death if I spent all my time with other businesspeople, bankers and lawyers. — Eli Broad

If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success. — Samuel Butler

It begins by the wives being bored to death because their men are so tired from making money they don't pay any attention to 'em. But when their wives start hollering, instead of trying to understand why, the men just go find a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. Then when they get tired of talking about themselves they go back to their wives. Everything's rosy for a while, but the men get tired and their wives start yellin' again and around it goes. Men in this age have turned the Other Woman into a psychiatrist's couch, and at far less expense, too. — Harper Lee

We're all of us prospectors up here, eh, Tyler? Scratchin' for that... that one crack in the ground. Never have to scratch again. I'll let you in on a little secret, Tyler: the gold's not in the ground. The gold's not anywhere up here. The real gold is south of 60 - sittin' in livin' rooms, stuck facin' the boob tube, bored to death. Bored to death, Tyler...Boredom - that's what's wrong. And how do you beat boredom, Tyler?... Adventure. — Curtis Hanson

A man who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted, all at the same time; he wants to fight everyone, and he wants to curl up in a ball and hide in a cupboard somewhere. He wants to say sorry to everyone, and he wants everyone to know just how badly they've all let him down. — Nick Hornby

Elizabeth disliked the tragic, martyred image of Virginia Woolf which grew up after her death. When she read the first volume of William Plomer's autobiography, At Home, in 1958, she told him that 'only you seem to bring back Virginia's laughter - I get so bored and irked by the tragic fiction which has been manufactured about her since 1941. — Victoria Glendinning

The secret of my long life is that nothing has ever been dull for me. For all my life I have been interested in everything I saw and been anxious to see more. But I cannot stand to be bored, and I will not go to parties at which I expect to be bored, especially if they are my own. Therefore, to my next ball I shall invite one guest I am sure no one, not even myself, could possibly find boring. My friends, the guest of honor at my next party shall be Death himself. — Peter S. Beagle

Our passion is what we have been designed to do so as not to get bored between being born and death. — Ben Tolosa

I'm glad I haven't found my style yet. I'd be bored to death. — Edgar Degas

My best day ever. Got up. Had breakfast. Came to school. Bored, as usual. Wishing I wasn't there, like usual. Kids ignoring me, suits me fine. Sitting with the other retards - we're so special. Wasting my time. Yesterday was the same, and it's gone, anyway. Tomorrow may never come. There is only today. This is the best day and the worst day. Actually it's crap. — Rachel Ward

The Path Of Least Resistance Is Littered With The Corpses Of The Bored To Death — Dean Cavanagh

Ironically, we may discover that death meditation is not a morbid exercise at all. Only when we lose the use of something taken for granted (whether the telephone or an eye) are we jolted into a recognition of its value. When the phone is fixed, the bandage removed from the eye, we briefly rejoice in their restoration but swiftly forget them again. In taking them for granted, we cease to be conscious of them. In taking life for granted, we likewise fail to notice it. (To the extent that we get bored and long for something exciting to happen.) By meditat- ing on death, we paradoxically become conscious of life. — Stephen Batchelor

"Fine! Fine! I'm listening ... but it's not very interesting! ...
"Oh, that's what you think! that's what you think! but nothing is very interesting, dear Professor Y! jot this down! take some notes!"
"What notes?"
"Just write! ... that if it weren't for wars, alcohol, blood pressure and cancer, the people in our atheistic Europe would soon be bored to death of life! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place, bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself. — Charles Dickens

Smoking can kill you, he said, and I replied: sounds better than being bored to death — Chloe Thurlow

I used to be the youngest person on the set [of Bored To Death]. Now I'm very often the oldest person on the set. I feel lucky about that, to be honest. Lena [Dunham], by the way is a doll to me. So much fun to work with and really open. — Richard Masur

They meet again at dinner--again, next day-- again, for many days in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. Mr. Tulkinghorn is always the same speechless repository of noble confidences, so oddly but of place and yet so perfectly at home. They appear to take as little note of one another as any two people enclosed within the same walls could. But whether each evermore watches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great reservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the other, and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know how much the other knows--all this is hidden, for the time, in their own hearts. — Charles Dickens

I wouldn't feel satisfied being on set every day doing a romantic comedy - I'd be bored to death. — Joaquin Phoenix

I did Bored To Death with Jason [Schwartzman] and Zach Galifianakis and those guys. I mean, how lucky can you be that you get to be the old guy? I get to be Robert Preston to them now. That's what I feel. My job is to pass on what Preston and other people gave to me, which was show up, take the work seriously, don't take yourself seriously, and have a good time and be of service. Be there to support. — Richard Masur

I would be bored to death if I didn't control a country
Gin — Mayu Shinjo

To be bored to death is a form of suicide. — Frederick Buechner

Look at that ugly dead mask here and do not forget it. It is a chalk mask with dead dry poison behind it, like the death angel. It is what was this fall, and what I never want to be again. The pouting disconsolate mouth, the flat, bored, numb, expressionless eyes: symptoms of the foul decay within. — Sylvia Plath

I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, thats all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen even loveless slavery, even war or death. — Albert Camus

If you hate difference, you'll be bored to death. — Toba Beta

Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are billed to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. — Winston Churchill

You wouldn't think you could get bored falling to your death ... But when it's a really, really long drop, there's a definite risk on ennui. — Tom Holt

No story is more beautiful than the Gospel, even though it is a story full of pain and nails and hate and blood and sin and murder and betrayal and forsakenness and unimaginable agony and death. It is the story of what happens to the most beautiful thing, Perfect Love, when it enters our world: it comes to a Cross, to the crossroad between good and evil. All our most beautiful stories are like the Gospel: they are tragedies first, and then comedies; they are crosses and then crowns. They are crosses because they are conflicts between good and evil. That is the fundamental plot of every great story. To say "that story is beautiful" means "that story resembles the Gospel." If you are bored by the Gospel, that puts no black eye on the Gospel, but on you. Most likely, it means you have never listened to it. You must have heard it, but hearing is far from the same thing as listening ... — Peter Kreeft

Honestly, half the reason I like you is because you're so ... I don't know. You like life." He looked away from my eyes, amused as his thoughts spun, considering. "You're fearless. Bold. Not afraid to enjoy yourself. You just go out there and do what you want. I like the whirlwind you exist in. I envy it. It's funny, really." He smiled. "I used to think I wanted someone exactly like me, but now I think I'd be bored to death with another version of myself. I'm surprised I don't bore you sometimes."
I gaped. "Are you kidding? You're the most interesting person I know. Aside from Hugh maybe. But then, he installs breast implants and buys souls. That's a hard combination to beat. But he's not nearly as cute. — Richelle Mead

The Tylwyth Teg were immortal beings, but the burden of living for endless millennia was often tedium. It was one reason that the Fair Ones tended to play terrible pranks upon mortals. Like bored children, they sprang upon the unwary, seeking diversion. So it had been when a weary Celtic warrior turned reluctant gladiator had fought his way to freedom at last. Wounded and near death, pursued by his former captors, he'd blundered straight into the territory of the Tylwyth Teg in the steep hills northwest of Isca Silurum ... . — Dani Harper

To begin with, at home I spent most of my time reading. I wanted to stifle all that was continuously boiling up inside me through external impressions. Out of all external impressions, reading was the only one possible for me. Of course, reading helped a lot - it excited, delighted and tormented me. But at times it bored me to death. For all that I still wanted to be doing things and I would suddenly plunge into dark, subterranean, vile, not so much depravity as petty dissipation. My mean, trivial, lusts were keen and fiery as a result of my constant, morbid irritability. The surges were hysterical, always accompanied by tears and convulsion. Apart from reading I had nowhere to turn - I mean, there was nothing in my surroundings that I could respect then or to which I might have been attracted. Moreover, dreadful ennui was seething within me, a hysterical craving for contradictions and contrasts would make its presence felt [ ... ]. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The job has left me with a healthy disregard for what you might call Public Life. I have no desire now to go to receptions, to be seen at gatherings of the great and the good, to stand and be bored to death by men in grey suits. — Michael Longley

I was bored to death and thinking more about the minibar and the after-show party than the performance. — Volker Bertelmann