Catch 22 Joseph Heller Quotes

#1. Now that my kids are out of the house, I'm finally able to get to the classics I never read: Emily Bronte, Dylan Thomas, Joseph Heller's 'Catch-22.' It's endless. They're all in this gigantic pile next to my bed.

Robin Wright

#2. He smiled ostentatiously to show himself reasonable and nice. "I'm not saying that to be cruel and insulting," he continued with cruel and insulting delight.

Joseph Heller

#3. With a little ingenuity and vision, he had made it all but impossible for anyone in the squadron to talk to him, which was just fine with everyone, he noticed, since no one wanted to talk to him anyway.

Joseph Heller

#4. I was eighteen when I first read Joseph Heller's stunning work 'Catch-22,' and was at that time close to being drafted for the fruitless and unenlightened war in Viet Nam.

Thomas Steinbeck

#5. Maybe the best thing to do with favorite books is to leave them be: to achieve such exalted position means that they entered your life at exactly the right time, in precisely the right place, and those conditions can never be recreated.

Nick Hornby

#6. There is a lot of evidence to back up the assertion that war fiction takes time. Many all-time classics of the genre, from Erich Maria Remarque's 'All Quiet on the Western Front' to Joseph Heller's 'Catch-22' to Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried,' took over a decade to pen.

Matt Gallagher

#7. There's a catch. Catch-22.

Joseph Heller

#8. 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 ...

Joseph Heller

#9. Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions then he is caught in Catch-22: if he flies he is crazy, and doesn't have to; but if he doesn't want to he must be sane and has to. That's some catch ...

Joseph Heller

#10. I like Catch-22, Gravity's Rainbow and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, for instance, because the authors of those three surrealistic novels - Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon and Robert Pirsig - invented their own rules, knowing that the old ones wouldn't do the job they had in mind.

William Zinsser

#11. There is no light. I don't feel like starting my generator. I used to get a big kick out saving people's lives. Now I wonder what the hell's the point, since they all have to die anyway.Dr. Stubbs Catch -22

Joseph Heller

#12. Quotes are nothing but inspiration for the uninspired

Richard Kemp

#13. Catch-22 says they have the right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.

Joseph Heller

#14. Fortunately, just when things were blackest, the war broke out.

Joseph Heller

#15. Of course you're dying. We're all dying. Where the devil else do you think you're heading?

Joseph Heller

#16. They're not going to send a crazy man out to be killed, are they?"
"Who else will go?

Joseph Heller

#17. Kids have always play-fought, but I think my generation had a particularly privileged cultural fantasy surrounding military violence.

Nate Powell

#18. The spirit gone, man is garbage.

Joseph Heller

#19. A pointed illustration indeed of the old adage that "extremes meet".

Charlotte Bronte

#20. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't,
but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. That's some catch, that catch-22.

Joseph Heller

#21. He was one of those people with lots of intelligence but no brains

Joseph Heller

#22. They were the most depressing group of people Yossarian had ever been with. They were always in high spirits.

Joseph Heller

#23. This stuff is better than cotton candy, really it is. It's made out of real cotton. Yossarian, you've got to help me make the men eat it. Egyptian cotton is the finest cotton in the world.

Joseph Heller

#24. There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy ... There's a catch. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.

Joseph Heller

#25. There was one catch, and that was Catch-22.

Joseph Heller

#26. I'm glad she left me the kids. I'd be lost without them. Lost and bitter. With them here, I'm only bitter.

Steven Herrick

#27. The night was filled with 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, like a victim through a prison full of thieves. What a welcome sight a leper must have been!

Joseph Heller

#28. 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.

Joseph Heller

#29. When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'

Joseph Heller

#30. That goddam stunted, red-faced, big-cheeked, apple-cheeked, curlyheaded, midget assed, , google-eyed, undersized, grinning, buck-toothed rat!!" Yossarian sputtered.
~ Catch-22

Joseph Heller

#31. I would much rather America was a more stable, wonderful place. You know, I love it.

John Oliver

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

Joseph Heller

#33. I'm not running away from my responsibilities. I'm running to them. There's nothing negative about running away to save my life.

Joseph Heller