Life & Mortality Quote by William Goldman

Goldman’s line works because it refuses the sentimental bargain we keep trying to strike with reality. “Life isn’t fair” is the kind of bumper-sticker wisdom people use to shut down complaint or soothe disappointment. Then he twists it: life is “just fairer than death.” That comparative is the whole knife. Fairness isn’t presented as a moral law; it’s downgraded into a grim metric, a ranking system where the alternative isn’t utopia but extinction.

The intent is almost anti-inspirational: stop demanding that life meet an ethical standard, because the universe isn’t applying for the job. Yet the subtext isn’t nihilism. By conceding life’s unfairness while still preferring it, Goldman smuggles in a modest, stubborn gratitude. Life, however rigged, still contains chances: reversals, bargains, second acts. Death is the only outcome that cannot be renegotiated. If you’re looking for “justice,” the closest thing you’ll get is the fact that you’re still here to argue.

Context matters because Goldman is a novelist and screenwriter steeped in stories where romance and adventure collide with blunt mortality (the kind of storyteller who knows that happy endings only feel earned when the sword is real). The line sounds like dialogue because it is dialogue-ready: aphoristic, a little sardonic, designed to land in the chest and then keep echoing. It’s a worldview in one sentence: don’t confuse existence with benevolence, but don’t pretend the alternative is more principled.