Painterly frayed rope knotted around a wooden post beside a fallen red and cream jester hat.

Original artwork, not a still

Wilson Mizner

Stop dying. Am trying to write a comedy.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

Terse and darkly comic, the line tells someone to stop dying because the speaker is trying to write a comedy. It sets grim mortality against a working inconvenience, treating the dying as a rude interruption rather than a tragedy.

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