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Life & Mortality Quote by Liam Neeson

"But I was very, very lucky, and it was a wake up call as far as motorbikes are concerned. I never flirted with death on the bike, but now I'm totally convinced they're death machines"

About this Quote

Neeson’s phrasing lands like a confession that refuses to romanticize itself. He starts with the disarming humility of survival: “very, very lucky.” The repetition matters. It’s not actorly emphasis so much as an attempt to make randomness audible, to admit the outcome wasn’t earned. That’s the wake-up call: not “I learned my lesson,” but “I was spared.”

The line also pushes back against a stubborn cultural script around motorcycles - the idea that danger is a form of authenticity. “I never flirted with death” sounds like a rebuttal to the standard swagger: no, he wasn’t chasing the rush, he wasn’t performing fearlessness. It’s an older man’s insistence on motive, drawn in moral ink: I wasn’t reckless, and look how close it still came. That’s the subtext that makes the final pivot feel earned rather than melodramatic.

Then he detonates the fantasy with a tabloid-ready phrase: “death machines.” It’s blunt, almost cartoonish, and that’s why it works. Neeson isn’t parsing risk statistics; he’s describing a psychological conversion, the moment when an object stops being a hobby and becomes a hazard you can’t unsee. Coming from an actor whose screen persona often involves competence under pressure, the admission carries extra charge. He’s selling not toughness, but vulnerability - and it reads as a quiet refusal to let machismo write the ending.

Quote Details

TopicMortality
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Neeson, Liam. (n.d.). But I was very, very lucky, and it was a wake up call as far as motorbikes are concerned. I never flirted with death on the bike, but now I'm totally convinced they're death machines. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/but-i-was-very-very-lucky-and-it-was-a-wake-up-153753/

Chicago Style
Neeson, Liam. "But I was very, very lucky, and it was a wake up call as far as motorbikes are concerned. I never flirted with death on the bike, but now I'm totally convinced they're death machines." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/but-i-was-very-very-lucky-and-it-was-a-wake-up-153753/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"But I was very, very lucky, and it was a wake up call as far as motorbikes are concerned. I never flirted with death on the bike, but now I'm totally convinced they're death machines." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/but-i-was-very-very-lucky-and-it-was-a-wake-up-153753/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.

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Liam Neeson

Liam Neeson (born June 7, 1952) is a Actor from Ireland.

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