Morbidity Quotes

“When we define the Photograph as a motionless image, this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move; it means that they do not (i)emerge(i), do not (i)leave(i): they are anesthetized and fastened down, like butterflies.”
― Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

“Tanith frowned. Did people still go on DATES any more? She was sure they did. They probably called it something different though. She tried to think of the last date she'd been on. The last PROPER date. Did fighting side by side with Saracen Rue count as a date? They ended up snuggling under the moonlight, drenched in gore and pieces of brain - so it had PROBABLY been a date. If it wasn't, it was certainly a fun time had by all. Well, not ALL. But she and Saracen had sure had a blast.”
― Derek Landy, Mortal Coil

“Normal is an ilusion. What's normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.”
― Morticia Addams

“Beware of those who are bored and not passionate about life, for they will bore you with reasons for not living.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“We know the original relation of the theater and the cult of the Dead: the first actors separated themselves from the community by playing the role of the Dead: to make oneself up was to designate oneself as a body simultaneously living and dead: the whitened bust of the totemic theater, the man with the painted face in the Chinese theater, the rice-paste makeup of the Indian Katha-Kali, the Japanese No mask ... Now it is this same relation which I find in the Photograph; however 'lifelike' we strive to make it (and this frenzy to be lifelike can only be our mythic denial of an apprehension of death), Photography is a kind of primitive theater, a kind of Tableau Vivant, a figuration of the motionless and made-up face beneath which we see the dead.”
― Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

“To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote ‘King Lear.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

“The Sky was red, but not warm red of a sunset. This was an angry, glowering red, the colour of an infected wound.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“There is something very morbid about modern sympathy with pain.”
― Oscar Wilde

“There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it positively refuses to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.”
― William James

“Give the narrative a lighter tone than you think it deserves, dear boy, lighter than you think you can bear to give it," he instructed before I began to write, "because you won't find the truth of life in morbidity, only in hope.”
― Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas

“He would have died rather quickly to not lose track of his wife in the afterlife.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“I feel that the Photograph creates my body or mortifies it, according to its caprice (apology of this mortiferous power: certain Communards paid with their lives for their willingness or even their eagerness to pose on the barricades: defeated, they were recognized by Thiers's police and shot, almost every one).”
― Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

“The Winter Photograph was my Ariadne, not because it would help me discover a secret thing (monster or treasure), but because it would tell me what constituted that thread which drew me toward Photography. I had understood that henceforth I must interrogate the evidence of Photography, not from the viewpoint of pleasure, but in relation to what we romantically call love and death.”
― Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

“All children are morbid: it's their one saving grace.”
― Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms

“It’s normal to be curious about death. But as people grow up, they internalize this idea that wondering about death is “morbid” or “weird.” They grow scared, and criticize other people’s interest in the topic to keep from having to confront death themselves.”
― Caitlin Doughty, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death

“Morbidity and Mortality Rounds

Forgive me, body before me, for this.
Forgive me for my bumbling hands, unschooled
in how to touch: I meant to understand
what fever was, not love. Forgive me for
my stare, but when I look at you, I see
myself laid bare. Forgive me, body, for
what seems like calculation when I take
a breath before I cut you with my knife,
because the cancer has to be removed.
Forgive me for not telling you, but I’m
no poet. Please forgive me, please. Forgive
my gloves, my callous greeting, my unease—
you must not realize I just met death
again. Forgive me if I say he looked
impatient. Please, forgive me my despair,
which once seemed more like recompense. Forgive
my greed, forgive me for not having more
to give you than this bitter pill. Forgive:
for this apology, too late, for those
like me whose crimes might seem innocuous
and yet whose cruelty was obvious.
Forgive us for these sins. Forgive me, please,
for my confusing heart that sounds so much
like yours. Forgive me for the night, when I
sleep too, beside you under the same moon.
Forgive me for my dreams, for my rough knees,
for giving up too soon. Forgive me, please,
for losing you, unable to forgive.”
― Rafael Campo

“He now detected this worldly sadness in Designori's face, expressed there with the greatest purity and intensity, as though his face were meant to be representative of many, to epitomize the secret sufferings and morbidity of a multitude.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

“Dahmer was as manipulative and calculating as the other killers we've covered in this book, demonstrating a keen understanding of how to evade capture the vast majority of his victims were Black men, not because Dahmer was exclusively attracted to the them but because he knew that police were much less likely to investigate their disappearances. In this, he was absolutely correct, harkening back to the "less dead" theory we discussed in Gacy's case. When you add gay and poor to that victim profile as many of Dahmer's victims were, you've got the perfect trifecta of investigative apathy.”
― Marcus Parks, The Last Book On The Left: Stories of Murder and Mayhem from History's Most Notorious Serial Killers

“I'm standing in a crowd, with a crowd, actually just a part of the crowd.”
― Nalini Dhiman, The Labyrinth of Clouds

“Differences
in morbidity, mortality, and nutritional status linked to differences in
socioeconomic status, caste, class, gender, and geography persist in India.”
― Bibek Debroy, Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform

“Death was an existential catastrophe, a rip in the soft upholstery with which humanity padded over a hard uncaring universe, but it turned out there were an amazing number of people whose job it was to deal with it for you, and all they ask in return are huge quantities of time and money.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land