Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

The line compresses a bleak truth into a punchline: whatever our struggles, the final outcome is death. Hepburn’s reputed quip uses gallows humor to puncture sentimentality about “life’s hardships,” suggesting that difficulty is not an aberration but the default condition of being alive. The joke’s sting comes from its logical escalation—if life is “hard,” the ultimate proof is that it ends us—turning complaint into perspective. Read more generously, it can also be heard as bracing stoicism: since the endpoint is fixed, one might as well meet adversity with wit, courage, and a refusal to be melodramatic about suffering.