Joseph Heller Quotes
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Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet people. It provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble.
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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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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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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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It made him proud that 29 months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude.
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It's a wise person, I guess, who knows he's dumb, and an honest person who knows he's a liar. And it's a dumb person, I guess, whose convinced he's wise...-Bob Slocum
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I'm gonna live forever, or die trying.
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The problem with the loneliness I suffer is that the company of others has never been a cure for it.
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The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.
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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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How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?
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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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Why are they going to disappear him?' I don't know.' It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar.
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It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.
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If character is destiny, the good are damned.
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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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He was never without misery, and never without hope.
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The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.
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Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed.
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We do have a zeal for laughter in most situations, give or take a dentist.
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Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office.
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From now on I'm thinking only of me." Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: "But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way." "Then," said Yossarian, "I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?
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Actually there were many officers' clubs that Yossarian had not helped build, but he was proudest of the one on Pianosa. It was a sturdy and complex monument to his powers of determination. Yossarian never went there to help until it was finished; then he went there often, so pleased was he with the large , fine, rambling shingled building. It was a truly splendid building, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his.
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I can't start writing until I have a closing line.