Joseph Heller Quotes

Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.

Joseph Heller

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Quotes to Explore

• I think in every picture that I've ever made. Everything that I've done torments me. I really would like another chance except I'd be too embarrassed to ever really try to do them again and no one would want to see the same movie just done differently.

  

  Sam Raimi
  • Done
  • Movie
  • Picture

• I tried to take seriously the idea that if you tortured language you might arrive at some new truth. Later it became clear to me that I was retreading ground by fighting the literary battles of the 1950s and 1960s, and that I was actually a bit bored by some of the books I professed to love.

  

  Hari Kunzru
  • Love
  • Truth
  • Fighting

• I have been running since I was 7. I was trying to restructure the way my body was made instead of trying to master the way I ran. I would get so frustrated with my starts in practices that I would just cry. When I ran, I wouldn't even try to get out of the blocks, I would just run.

  

  Florence Griffith Joyner
  • Trying
  • Running
  • Body

• There are lots of actors who insist on speaking the lines themselves, and you hear the same thing from directors and the audience, but I don't think it's worth getting het up about. I think it makes more sense to use someone who speaks that country's language: that's what voice actors are for.

  

  Tadanobu Asano
  • Up
  • Country
  • Language

• Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Great
  • Mother
  • Effort

• As a boy, I was a member of a club run by the famous reptile showman Ross Allen, and the club sent its members pseudoscientific papers mimeographed on construction paper with a three-hole punch.

  

  Padgett Powell
  • Boy
  • Famous
  • Run

• I, as a cricketer, would like to see 100 counties playing top-flight cricket, just like tennis and football. If I am alive to see that, I will be very happy.

  

  Kapil Dev
  • Happy
  • Football
  • Tennis

• Big-government proponents embrace both the power of the federal government and the idea that millions of Americans ought to be dependent on its largesse. It's time to return to our Founders' love for small government. More is not always better.

  

  Gary Bauer
  • Time
  • Government
  • Better

• My first day of high school, I wore brown boys' corduroys that my mom had sewn Sesame Street elastic into - they were my coolest pants - and a lime green Patagonia fleece that my mom found at Goodwill. I loved fleece.

  

  Cameron Russell
  • School
  • High
  • Day

• Growing up, I was not used to good things happening to me.

  

  Quinton Aaron
  • Good
  • Growing
  • Me

• When you're lucky enough to get paid a nice chunk of change to write a movie or a TV show, you have no right to complain, really. I guess it's more of an appeal to the powers that be that the less they interfere, the more likely, actually, they are to get something that works, I think.

  

  Beau Willimon
  • Movie
  • Change
  • Nice

• Texas Republican political leaders take perverse pride in how deeply they have cut our state's education budget. Thousands of teachers have been pulled from classrooms, schools have closed and valuable programs have been canceled. In many places, districts are forced to choose between prekindergarten programs and English, algebra and art.

  

  Wendy Davis
  • Art
  • Political
  • Education

• Cancelled isn't a bad word because it happens everyday.

  

  Wayne Brady
  • Bad
  • Everyday
  • Word

• I've done it all.

  

  Barbara Bush
  • Done

• I think it's a mistake to work on success in career. I've worked on my passions obsessively. How can I say what I want to say more precisely than the last time I said it? Success is such an elusive concept. When you work for it, I think you get it in a way you might regret it.

  

  Keinan Abdi Warsame
  • Time
  • Work
  • Career

• At some point, life starts to pass you by and becomes about avoidance. I want to stay clear from that situation, because I don't like that.

  

  Daniel Craig
  • Life
  • Want
  • Situation

• I'm really lucky, because I've been able to go places and meet people you can only dream of.

  

  Frances Bean Cobain
  • People
  • Dream
  • Lucky

• I'd rather go to sleep than find a girl.

  

  Niall Horan One Direction
  • Girl
  • Myself
  • Sleep

• You said we all want there to be more than this! Well, there's always more than this. There's always something you don't know.

  

  Patrick Ness
  • Want
  • Always
  • Something

• Yeats was the greatest poet of our times . . . certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language.

  

  T. S. Eliot
  • Judge

• I'm good at utilising body parts as letters.

  

  Tavi Gevinson
  • Good
  • Body
  • Letters

• Alice?” She spun toward the door, her skirts whirling softly. “Yes?” she forced out. “Do you know what I am holding in my hand?” “No.” “Care to guess?” “A pitchfork?” she asked in a stilted attempt at levity, hoping to invoke his earlier, playful mood. “No, my dear,” he answered drily. “A key to your room.” “What?”she breathed, aghast. “I should hate to have to use it.” “You have a key to this room?” “Mm-hmm.” She took a step toward the door, panic rising up in her throat. “You’re bluffing!” “Do you wish me to prove it?

  

  Gaelen Foley
  • Care
  • Should
  • Hands

• In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.

  

  Paul Auster
  • Life
  • Purpose
  • Chance

• Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.

  

  Joseph Heller
  • Hands
  • Letters
  • Adjectives