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Time & Perspective Quote by Emo Philips

"Probably the worst time in a person's life is when they have to kill a family member because they are the devil. But otherwise it's been a pretty good day"

About this Quote

Emo Philips lands this punchline by treating the unthinkable like a scheduling inconvenience. The first sentence gestures toward a horror-movie scenario - patricide-as-exorcism - and frames it as a relatable low point: "Probably the worst time in a person's life..". That faux-empathetic, self-help cadence is doing the heavy lifting. It invites you into a familiar register of bland reassurance, then detonates it with "kill a family member because they are the devil", a premise so extreme it makes the setup's calmness feel clinically wrong.

The second sentence is the twist of the knife: "But otherwise it's been a pretty good day". The joke isn't just shock; it's the deadpan arithmetic of mood. Philips compresses trauma into a single bad appointment, surrounded by errands that apparently went fine. The subtext is a jab at how people narrate their lives - sanding down chaos into digestible anecdotes, insisting on a baseline of "fine" even when reality is screaming. It's also a parody of optimism culture, that American reflex to tack on a cheerful qualifier no matter what's in the first clause.

Context matters: Philips' persona is famously laconic, polite, and slightly alien, like a Hallmark card written by someone who learned emotions from instruction manuals. The devil detail lets him flirt with taboo violence without feeling cruel; it's not family hatred, it's cosmic necessity. The laugh comes from that moral loophole colliding with a tone so mild it becomes sinister.

Quote Details

TopicDark Humor
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Philips, Emo. (2026, January 15). Probably the worst time in a person's life is when they have to kill a family member because they are the devil. But otherwise it's been a pretty good day. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/probably-the-worst-time-in-a-persons-life-is-when-148014/

Chicago Style
Philips, Emo. "Probably the worst time in a person's life is when they have to kill a family member because they are the devil. But otherwise it's been a pretty good day." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/probably-the-worst-time-in-a-persons-life-is-when-148014/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Probably the worst time in a person's life is when they have to kill a family member because they are the devil. But otherwise it's been a pretty good day." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/probably-the-worst-time-in-a-persons-life-is-when-148014/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Emo Philips

Emo Philips (born February 7, 1956) is a Comedian from USA.

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