{"quotes":[{"text":"I dial her mum's number, then sit down cross-legged, facing the wall. When she comes on the line, she sounds uncertain, hesitant. 'Hey! Guess where I am?' I ask, my voice loud with false cheer. 'Rami told me. The Wellesly Hospital in Worthing. What's it like?' 'For a loony-bin it's actually quite decent,' I reply. 'I don't have Sky or an en-suite, and the menu isn't exactly à la carte, but you know...' I tail off. There is a silence. 'Do you have your own room?' Jenna asks, 'Oh yeah, yeah. I have a lovely view of the sea between the bars of my window.' She doesn't laugh. 'Have you started' -there is a pause as she searches for the right word -'threatment?''Yeah, yeah. We had group therapy today. Tomorrow we'll probably have art therapy - maybe I'll draw you a hourse and a garden. I know, perhaps they'll teach us to make baskets! Isn't that why they call us basket cases?''Flynn, stop,' Jennah softly implores.'And we'll probably have music therapy the day after. Maybe I'll get to play the tambourine. Or the triangle. I've always wanted to play the triangle!''Flynn-''No, I'm serious! I'll ask for some manuscript paper and see if I can write a composition for tambourine and triangle. Then I can post if off to you to hand in for my next composition assignment.''Flynn, listen-''Hold on, hold on! I'm making a note to myself now: Find fellow insane musician and start composing the Flynn Laukonen Sonata for Tambourine and Triangle.''Flynn-''And then, when they let me out, if they ever let me out, perhaps you could pull a few strigns and organize for me and my tambourine buddy to give a recital. I'm not sure where though -how about the subway at Marble Arch tube? Nice and central, good acoustics-''What are the other people like?' Jennah cuts in, an edge to her voice. I notice she doesn't use the word patients. Clever Jennah. For a moment there you almost made me forget I was locked up in a mental institution.'Round the bend, just like me,' I reply. 'I'm in excellent company. We'll be swapping suicide tips in no time at all!' I give a harsh laugh.","author":"Tabitha Suzuma","tags":["black-humor","composition","depression","mental-illness","music","piano"],"id":22987,"author_id":"Tabitha+Suzuma"},{"text":"The dead, Your Honor, do not agonize over their crimes and do not long to be happy, as you know.","author":"Hassan Blasim","tags":["black-humor","dead","death","gallows-humor"],"id":25824,"author_id":"Hassan+Blasim"},{"text":"He could see her planting violets on his grave, a solitary figure in a grey cloak. What a ghastly tragedy. A lump came to his throat. He became quite emotional thinking of his own death. He would have to write a poem about this. --from a Difference in Temperament.","author":"Daphne du Maurier","tags":["black-humor","vanity"],"id":29204,"author_id":"Daphne+du+Maurier"},{"text":"I'm afraid it's not nonsense,' Genghis said, shaking his turbaned head and continuing his story. 'As I was saying before the little girl interrupted me, the baby didn't dash off with the other orphans. She just sat there like a sack of flour. So I walked over to her and gave her a kick to get her moving.'Excellent idea!' Nero said. 'What a wonderful story this is! And then what happened?'Well, at first it seemed like I'd kicked a big hole in the baby,' Genghis said, his eyes shining, 'which seemed lucky, because Sunny was a terrible athlete and it would have been a blessing to put her out of her misery.'Nero clapped his hands. 'I know just what you mean, Genghis,' he said. 'She's a terrible secretary as well.'But she did all that stapling,' Mr. Remora protested. 'Shut up and let the coach finish his story,' Nero said.'But when I looked down,' Genghis continued, 'I saw that I hadn't kicked a hole in a baby. I'd kicked a hole in a bag of flour! I'd been tricked!'That's terrible!' Nero cried.","author":"Lemony Snicket","tags":["a-series-of-unfortunate-events","absurd","apathy","baby","black-humor","count-olaf","cruel-joke","cruelty","dark-humor","lemony-snicket","nonsense","the-austere-academy"],"id":50980,"author_id":"Lemony+Snicket"},{"text":"You see, insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.","author":"Joseph Kesselring","tags":["black-humor","insanity"],"id":55852,"author_id":"Joseph+Kesselring"},{"text":"What would you think of an engineer who expounded the art of flying without revealing the secrets of the engine and propeller? That's what you do, you engineer of the human soul. Just that. You're a coward. You want the raisins out of my cake but you don't want the thorns of my roses. Haven't you too, little psychiatrist, been cracking silly jokes about me? Haven't you ridiculed me as 'the prophet of bigger and better orgasms'? Have you never heard the whimpering of a young wife whose body has been desecrated by an impotent husband? Or the anguished cry of an adolescent bursting with unfulfilled love? Does your security still mean more to you than your patient? How long will you go on valuing your respectability above your medical mission? How long will you refuse to see that your pussyfooting procrastination is costing millions their lives?","author":"Wilhelm Reich","tags":["black-humor","fear","inspirational","ridicule"],"id":62488,"author_id":"Wilhelm+Reich"},{"text":"Also,' Nick added curtly, 'I'm sorry about your face.'Jamie looked over his shoulder, and touched the demon's mark crawling along his jaw with the back of his hand. 'Sorry about saving all our lives by doing something you had to do?'Oh no,' Nick said blandly, 'I just meant, you know. Generally.'Jamie stared at him, shocked, and laughed. It was a real laugh, helpless and sweet, and Mae memorized it in case he died. Jamie by the river at dawn, laughing.","author":"Sarah Rees Brennan","tags":["black-humor","demons","siblings"],"id":74630,"author_id":"Sarah+Rees+Brennan"},{"text":"... A man doesn't like to have his ego popped, especially when he prides himself on his sagacity, and then to be proved wrong by a man who claims he doesn't know anything.","author":"E.A. Bucchianeri","tags":["black-humor","dark-humor","ego","egotism","egotist","funny","gadfly","humorous","irony","irony-of-life","men","pride","pride-trap","sarcasm","socrates"],"id":98033,"author_id":"E.A.+Bucchianeri"},{"text":"I could think of no better place to secretly murder someone than inside a fridge. Well, actually there were probably several better ones, but none came to mind at the time.","author":"Yahtzee Croshaw","tags":["black-humor","hindsight","murder"],"id":105319,"author_id":"Yahtzee+Croshaw"},{"text":"His hatred for all was so intense that it should extinguish the very love from which it was conceived. And thus, he ceased to feel. There was nothing further in which to believe that made the prospect of feeling worthwhile. Daily he woke up and cast downtrodden eyes upon the sea and he would say to himself with a hint of regret at his hitherto lack of indifference, 'All a dim illusion, was it? Surely it was foolish of me to think any of this had meaning.' He would then spend hours staring at the sky, wondering how best to pass the time if everything—even the sky itself— were for naught. He arrived at the conclusion that there was no best way to pass the time. The only way to deal with the illusion of time was to endure it, knowing full well, all the while, that one was truly enduring nothing at all. Unfortunately for him, this nihilistic resolution to dispassion didn’t suit him very well and he soon became extremely bored. Faced now with the choice between further boredom and further suffering, he impatiently chose the latter, sailing another few weeks along the coast , and then inland, before finally dropping anchor off the shores of the fishing village of Yami.","author":"Ashim Shanker","tags":["absurdist-fiction","ashim-shanker","bitterness","black-humor","boredom","cosmic-irony","disappointment","dispassion","ennui","gallows-humor","hatred","indifference","infinitude","irony-of-life","love","love-and-hate","naught","nihilism","only-the-deplorable","passage-of-time","prolonging-life","suffering"],"id":117686,"author_id":"Ashim+Shanker"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":38,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}