Joseph Heller Quotes
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Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all. I'm cold,' Snowden said. 'I'm cold.
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The promises of maniacs, like those of women, are not safely relied upon.
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For war there is always enough. It's peace that's expensive.
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I've come to look upon death the same way I look upon root-canal work. Everyone else seems to get through it all right, so it couldn't be too difficult for me.
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The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as we could with both of them.
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Everybody is as unstable as water.
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Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts - and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?
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It is the anonymous "they," the enigmatic "they" who are in charge. Who is "they"? I don't know. Nobody knows. Not even "they" themselves.
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I write longhand and I type and I rewrite on the typed pages.
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Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?
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I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.
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Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did.
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Erogenous zones are either everywhere or nowhere.
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Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure.
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How did I get here? Somebody pushed me. Somebody must have set me off in this direction and clus-ters of other hands must have touched themselves to the controls at various times, for I would not have picked this way for the world.
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When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.
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Sure, that's what I mean,' Doc Daneeka said. 'A little grease is what makes this world go round. One hand washes the other. Know what I mean? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.' Yossarian knew what he meant. That's not what I meant,' Doc Daneeka said, as Yossarian began scratching his back.
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I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals.
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Well then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?
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They agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.
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Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.
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The body stores the trauma of our lives in muscular rigidity, thereby keeping us stuck in the past. When we release the tension in the body and align ourselves with gravity, we take a new stand in life. This allows us to be at ease with ourselves and in harmony in our relationship to others and to our planet.
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Fortunately, just when things were blackest, the war broke out.