Life's Pleasures Quote by Ani DiFranco

A dare disguised as a shrug, Ani DiFranco’s line turns the basic human job description - survive - into a low-status errand. The speaker isn’t denying danger; she’s denying its authority. “Eat me alive” is tabloid-brutal, the language of a hostile crowd, an industry, an ex, a culture that mistakes devouring women for entertainment. The punch is that she answers that threat with time management: “I’ve got better things to do.” That’s the flex. She treats annihilation like background noise.

The specific intent feels less suicidal than defiant: a refusal to let fear become the organizing principle of a life. DiFranco’s larger project has always been about self-authorship - DIY career, political clarity, bodily autonomy - and this line compresses that stance into one provocation. She’s telling you what she won’t negotiate with: public judgment, the commodification machine, the demand to be palatable. If survival requires shrinking, apologizing, sanding down the edges, then survival isn’t a virtue; it’s a trap.

The subtext is also about priorities in a culture that sells safety as the highest good. DiFranco flips the script: meaning, integrity, creation, activism, even joy are “better things” than merely staying intact. The slightly off-kilter “then” instead of “than” even works as punk punctuation - a reminder that polish is optional when the point is urgency.