Daily Inspiration Quote by Brendan Behan

Behan turns a publicist's coping mantra into a mordant little booby trap. On the surface, its swagger is obvious: take the hit, take the headline, keep your name in circulation. But the punchline - "except your own obituary" - exposes the scam at the center of fame culture. Publicity is only useful insofar as it keeps you available to be consumed. Death ends the transaction, and Behan makes that brutal arithmetic feel like a joke you laugh at a beat too late.

As a dramatist and notorious drinker with a talent for self-mythology, Behan understood reputation as performance. The line is built like stagecraft: set up a crowd-pleasing aphorism, then undercut it with the one consequence you can't spin. There's cynicism here, but also a bleak tenderness. "Bad publicity" implies moral failure or scandal; Behan waves it off, suggesting that outrage is just another form of attention. The exception isn't morality, it's finality. The only truly "bad" press is the kind that freezes you into a finished story, written by someone else.

Context matters: mid-century literary celebrity, tabloid appetite, the Irish writer as romantic wreck. Behan's quip prefigures today's attention economy, where cancellation can be rebranded as content and notoriety converts into bookings. The line's real intent is a warning disguised as bravado: if you treat your life as material, the public will too - right up until the moment they can't, and then they package your ending as the last, definitive headline.