When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.

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

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.

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.

I don't think it's good to achieve too much at too early an age. What else can the future give you if you've already got all that your imagination has dreamt up for you? A writer is only discovered once in a lifetime, and if it happens very early the impossibility of matching that moment again can have a somewhat corrosive effect on his personality and indeed on the work itself.

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.

That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.