The smartest people in Washington are the political reporters. They write about their inferiors.

But how can one be warm alone?

Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.

I'm gonna live forever, or die trying.

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

Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.

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.