Death Jokes Quotes & Sayings

What Whileawayans Celebrate

The full moon
The Winter solstice (You haven't lived if you haven't seen us running around in our skivvies, banging on pots and pans, shouting "Come back, sun! Goddammit, come back! Come back!")
The Summer solstice (rather different)
The autumnal equinox
The vernal equinox
The flowering of trees
The flowering of bushes
The planting of seeds
Happy copulation
Unhappy copulation
Longing
Jokes
Leaves falling off the trees (where deciduous)
Acquiring new shoes
Wearing same
Birth
The contemplation of a work of art
Marriages
Sport
Divorces
Anything at all
Nothing at all
Great ideas
Death — Joanna Russ

Babcock knew no Southerners personally but he had seen them in court often enough ... and Ed's manner and appearance said Dixie to him. He imagined Ed at home with his family, a big one, from old geezers to toddlers. He saw them eating their yams and pralines and playing their fiddles and dancing their jigs and guffawing over coarse jokes and beating one another to death with agricultural implements. — Charles Portis

Death isn't funny."
"Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us - us humans - death is so sad that we must laugh at it. — Robert A. Heinlein

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church--which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner--sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so. — Jason Reynolds

This was Jace being brave. Simon thought, brave and snarky because he thought Lilith was going to kill him, and that was the way he wanted to go, unafraid and on his feet. Like a warrior. The way Shadowhunters did. His death song would always be this-jokes and snideness and pretend arrogance, and that look in his eyes that said 'I'm better than you'. Simon just hadn't realized it before. — Cassandra Clare

We're built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, heartbreak, problems. It's what separates us from the animals and why we envy and love animals so much. We're aware of it all and have to process it. The way we each handle being human is where all the good stories, jokes, art, wisdom, revelations, and bullshit come from. — Marc Maron

The Mexican ... is familiar with death. [He] jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love. — Octavio Paz

Special Agent Pallas. Just the man I was looking for.' Cameron went to fold her arms across her chest, then seemed to realize - nope, no room there. 'What is this I hear about someone saying that my employees need to stay out of my way or risk an untimely death by paper clip?' Next to Jack, Agent Sam Wilkins looked up at the ceiling, speaking under his breath. 'I told you that would not go over well ... ' Jack held up his hands. 'It was a joke.' 'A joke.' Cameron's gaze went to Sam. 'Agent Wilkins. Was Agent Pallas scowling or smiling at the time of this alleged joke?' 'I plead the fifth.' 'A paralegal practically dove headfirst into a cubicle to get out of my way, Jack. So no more jokes. — Julie James

Several Terminal Policy readers got together to tell Raker jokes:
- Raker CAN piss into the wind.
- Raker donates a lot of blood to the Red Cross
just never his own.
- Superman wears Raker pajamas.
- When Raker jumps into the pool, he doesn't get wet
the pool gets Raker.
- Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Raker THREW her there!!
- Raker's daughter lost her virginity ... he got it back.
- Raker doesn't cheat death, he wins fair and square.
- Raker turns on a light at night ... not because he's afraid of the dark but because the dark is afraid of him.
- When the boogy man goes to bed he checks under his bed for Raker.
- Don't tread on Raker's cape! — Liam McCurry

Death meant little to me. It was the last joke in a series of bad jokes. — Charles Bukowski

Tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so. — Laurence Sterne

The word "holiday" comes from "holy day" and holy means "exalted and worthy of complete devotion." By that definition, all days are holy. Life is holy. Atheists have joy every day of the year, every holy day. We have the wonder and glory of life. We have joy in the world before the lord is come. We're not going for the promise of life after death; we're celebrating life before death. The smiles of children. The screaming, the bitching, the horrific whining of one's own children. The glory of giving or receiving a blow job. Sunsets, rock and roll, bebop, Jell-O, stinky cheese, and offensive jokes.
For atheists, everything in the world is enough and every day is holy. Every day is an atheist holiday. It's a day that we're alive. — Penn Jillette

I frowned as my fingers throbbed. "Wait a sec. There's a chance I can't work with fire and you let me do that?""How else am I going to figure out your limitations?"
"What the hell!" I pulled my hand free, furious. "That's not cool, Blake. What's next? Trying to stop a moving vehicle by standing in front of it, but whoops, I can't do that and now I'm dead? — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I think there are brilliant jokes to be made about abortion, and we should be able to talk about this in the way that we make jokes about death - you should be able to make jokes about everything. — Caitlin Moran

Almost any tale of our doings is comic. We are bottomlessly comic to each other. Even the most adored and beloved person is comic to his lover. The novel is a comic form. Language is a comic form, and makes jokes in its sleep. God, if He existed, would laugh at His creation. Yet it is also the case that life is horrible, without metaphysical sense, wrecked by chance, pain and the close prospect of death. Out of this is born irony, our dangerous and necessary tool. — Iris Murdoch

It will startle you to see what slaves we are to by-gone times-to Death, if we give the matter the right word! ... We read in Dead Men's books! We laugh at Dead Men's jokes, and cry at Dead Men's pathos! ... Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a Dead Man's icy hand obstructs us! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

SAVICH STOOD OVER the metal parcel cage he'd been told was called an OTR, looked at the boxes scattered around it on the floor, streaked and smudged with blood like abstract paintings. Only the packages beneath the body had kept the blood from dripping out of the OTR. He looked down to see the body of an older man with a circle of gray hair around his head. He was torqued into a tight fetal position - difficult because he was heavy - his arms pulled between his legs. No deputy's uniform. He wore a long-sleeved flannel shirt, old jeans, and ancient brown boots. Impossible to tell what sort of man he'd been - if he'd enjoyed jokes, if he'd loved his family, if he'd been honorable - that was all wiped away, gone in an instant, when the Athame was stuck into his heart. There had to be people out there already worrying about Kane Lewis, wondering where he was. They'd find out soon enough. Savich imagined he'd been a pleasant-looking man, but not in death. No, not in death. — Catherine Coulter

Animula vagula blandula
Hospes comesque corporis
Quae nunc abibis? In Loca
Pallidula rigida nudula
nec ut soles dabis Iocos.
Little soul, you charming little wanderer, my body's guest and partner,
where are you off to now?
somewhere without colour, savage and bare;
You'll crack no more of your jokes once you're there. — Hadrian

My last vivid boyhood fright from books came when I was 15; I was visiting my uncle and aunt in Greenwich, and, emboldened by my success with 'The Waste Land,' I opened their copy of 'Ulysses.' The whiff of death off those remorseless, closely written pages overpowered me. So: back to soluble mysteries, and jokes that were not cosmic. — John Updike

A button machine makes buttons, no matter what the power used, foot, steam or electricity. They, no matter what the motivating force, death, love or God, made jokes. — Nathanael West

If he were another person entirely, he might burst into flowery speech. If he did, she'd probably laugh at him. Besides, he didn't believe in pretending to be anyone other than who he was. Even if she swooned at whatever poetic nonsense he managed to spout, she would only be disappointed once they grew comfortable with each other and he went back to making jokes about death and gonorrhea. — Courtney Milan

I've done a lot of death cartoons - tombstones, Grim Reaper, illness, obituaries ... I'm not great at analyzing things, but my guess is that maybe the only relief from the terror of being alive is jokes. — Roz Chast

It was a lesson she was still learning. When she had first started nursing, she had taken every death personally, like she was losing her father all over again. Every patient lost under her care was a little piece of death she would carry around with her until the end of her own life. But the alternative seemed so unfeeling. Tina and the other nurses could crack jokes and banter back and forth about contestants on American Idol before the body of a deceased patient was even cold. It was a coping mechanism, she knew, but not necessarily one she thought she would ever adopt. There had to be something in between. Olive had been called a bleeding heart before, but her heart no longer had the same plasticity and tenderness - it was scarred and worn beyond repair — Andrea Lochen

I like sort of esoteric and weird Twitter jokes. But I actually unfollow people if they make jokes about a celebrity's death within the first two minutes of that celebrity dying. — Timothy Simons

The historical record contradicts the assumption that the Nazis sentenced large numbers of people to death during World War II for telling jokes. In the final phase of the Third Reich, some cases did receive capital sentences, but they were extreme exceptions to the rule. (We will return to them later.) The compilations of jokes that circulated in Germany after the war bore titles like Deadly Laughter and When Laughter Was Dangerous, but there is not much evidence that the jokes they contained were inevitably risky for the teller. — Rudolph Herzog

I woke up to an ache in my chest, the smell of chocolate, and the sound of the ghost making a racket in the kitchen. Now, I'm not the sort to dwell on doom and sorrow. Life is too short for that. But I should at least try to describe the ache briefly: It is not the kind that comes from eating tacos too late at night. It's the kind that comes from being left behind. I think my heart is smart enough to know there's a place I should be filling with new memories, new jokes, and wondrous adventures with the one person I loved most of all. But that person is gone now. And so, my heart has a giant hole. I call it The Big Empty. — Natalie Lloyd

The government passed more laws to protect women from dirty jokes than to protect men from death by faulty rafters at a construction site. — Warren Farrell

I often took him as one of God's little jokes on me. When I was in desperate trouble, what saved me from a fate worse than death? To what do I owe my life? Was it love, affection, understanding, friends, wisdom? No no no. It was a man who looks like a poor copy of Walt Disney, drives pink Cadillacs, wears baby-blue alligator shoes, and appears to have the emotional depth of a slightly retarded potato. — Mark Vonnegut

The preacher who jests and jokes with his people all week will soon find that he cannot stand in his pulpit on Sunday with power to reprove, rebuke and exhort. He may be the life of the party but it will be the death of the prophet. — Vance Havner

I don't really want to tell jokes about trivia; I'd kind of rather tell jokes about things like life and death. — David Shrigley

He was part of us and when he died all the actions stopped dead, and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. i've never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million actions the night he passed on. — Ray Bradbury

I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace. On any view whatever, to say, 'H. is dead,' is to say, 'All that is gone.' It is a part of the past. And the past is the past and that is what time means, and time itself is one more name for death, and Heaven itself is a state where 'the former things have passed away.' Talk — C.S. Lewis

And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I've never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on. — Ray Bradbury

A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I planted some jokes in my wedding. Like, the organizers asked me to select music. So when I approached wife at the ceremony, they played the second movement from Shostakovich's 10th Symphony, which is usually known as the "portrait of Stalin." And then when we embraced, the music that they played was Schubert's "Death and the Maiden." I enjoyed this in a childish way! But marriage was all a nightmare and so on and so on. — Slavoj Zizek

He put down the receiver and looked vaguely at the paper in his hand. It was a rough piece of white wrapping paper. Scrawled in pencil in ragged block letters were the words:
HE DISAGREED WITH SOMETHING THAT ATE HIM
And underneath in brackets:
(P.S. WE HAVE PLENTY MORE JOKES AS GOOD AS THIS) — Ian Fleming