Joseph Heller Quotes

Remember that everyone deserves some fun during working hours.

They can do anything we can't stop them from doing.

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.

But how can one be warm alone?

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.

The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals.

Why are they going to disappear him?' I don't know.' It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar.

He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret

The promises of maniacs, like those of women, are not safely relied upon.

Well, he died. You don't get any older than that.

Just for once I'd like to see all these things sort of straightened out, with each person getting exactly what he deserves. It might give me some confidence in this universe.

Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?

I don't understand the process of imagination-though I know that I am very much at its mercy.

The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.

The laws of nature are only as immutable as the minds which promote them. Ignorance of the law is 9/10ths of the law. Just because you aren't paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?

I write longhand and I type and I rewrite on the typed pages.

[They] agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.

Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.

But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.

I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service.

The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish.

I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.

He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.

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.

Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did.

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.

When I grow up I want to be a little boy.

I want to keep my dreams, even bad ones, because without them, I might have nothing all night long.

The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.

I could not write about a subject sacred to me because I would be too flippant. Fortunately, there are no subjects sacred to me.

Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskoph had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.

Clevinger was a troublemaker and a wise guy. Lieutenant Scheisskopf knew that Clevinger might cause even more trouble if he wasn't watched. Yesterday it was the cadet officers; tomorrow it might be the world. Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times. Such men were dangerous, and even the new cadet officers whom Clevinger had helped into office were eager to give damning testimony against him. The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.

Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family.

I think that maybe in every company today there is always at least one person who is going crazy slowly.

So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?

Who's they?" He wanted to know. "Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?" "Every one of them," Yossarian told him. "Every one of whom?" "Every one of whom do you think?" "I haven't any idea." "Then how do you know they aren't?" "Because..." Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration. Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn't know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn't funny at all.

History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; WHICH men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.

He was never without misery, and never without hope.

He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.

I think in every country that there is at least one executive who is scared of going crazy.

Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousy chain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all.

Erogenous zones are either everywhere or nowhere.

where are the snowdens of yesteryear?