Love & Passion Quote by Steven Morrissey

Morrissey’s genius has always been making melodrama sound like a shrug, and this line sits right in that sweet spot: too bleak to be merely “sad,” too funny to be pure despair. The setup is domestically small - lying in bed, the universal staging area for insomnia and self-interrogation - then it swerves into the big metaphysical binaries. Life and death arrive not as profound mysteries but as menu options, and his punchline is witheringly polite: “neither one particularly appeals to me.” The adverb is the dagger. “Particularly” turns existential dread into consumer dissatisfaction, as if the afterlife is a bland entree and waking existence is poor service.

The intent isn’t to argue philosophy; it’s to perform a posture that’s both defensive and inviting. By framing alienation as taste, Morrissey keeps intimacy at arm’s length while still confessing a lot. The speaker isn’t choosing death, and that refusal matters: it’s not suicidal romanticism so much as a refusal to grant either side the dignity of being meaningful. That’s the subtext of the persona - the cultivated misfit who can’t be recruited by optimism or tragedy.

Contextually, it fits Morrissey’s larger project (and the Smiths-era mood he helped define): turning private misery into quotable communal theater. The line gives listeners a socially usable form of hopelessness, a way to admit “I’m not okay” without begging for rescue. It’s bleak, yes - but it’s also a joke designed to keep you alive long enough to laugh again.