Joseph Heller Quotes
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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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We do have a zeal for laughter in most situations, give or take a dentist.
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... there is wisdom in madness and strong probability of truth in all accusations, for people are complete, and everyone is capable of everything.
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You're an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I'm an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I'm in an ideal position to appreciate it.
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I write longhand and I type and I rewrite on the typed pages.
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Only Hungry Joe had something better to do each time he finished his missions. He had screaming nightmares and won fist fights with Huple's cat.
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Fortunately, just when things were blackest, the war broke out.
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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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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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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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The night was full of horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a ward full of nuts.
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All of our religions but the Judaic and the Greek think more of us dead than alive.
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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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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 wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.
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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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Where were you born?" "On a battlefield," Yossarian answered. "No, no. In what state were you born?" "In a state of innocence.
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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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Gold was not altogether certain what, anatomically, a gorge was, but he knew that his was rising.
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He was never without misery, and never without hope.
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It made him proud that 29 months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude.
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There was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to.
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In short, Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains, and everyone knew it except those who soon found it out.