Top 100 Quotes About Joseph Heller
#1. Joseph Heller knew how the need to belong, and the need for security, can make people accept lethal and stupid conditions, and then act as if they had imposed them on themselves.
Christopher Hitchens
#2. I think it's possible - perhaps even necessary - to find comedy in any war. I mean, look at the brilliant work which was done by Joseph Heller and Richard Hooker (M*A*S*H) and Jaroslav Hasek (The Good Soldier Svejk - which I haven't read, but have heard was funny).
Dave Abrams
#3. 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
#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. 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
#6. 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
#7. There's a great quote from Henry Kissinger, which I became aware of from reading [Joseph] Heller's Good As Gold. He said: 'Every great achievement was a dream before it became a reality.'
Roy Hodgson
#8. I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.
Joseph Heller
#9. I'd be the last colonel in the world to order you to go to that U.S.O. show and have a good time, but I want every one of you who isn't sick enough to be in a hospital to go to that U.S.O. show right now and have a good time, and that's an order!
Joseph Heller
#10. Yossarian wrinkled his forehead with quizzical amusement. You won't marry me because I'm crazy, and you say I'm crazy because I want to marry you? Is that right?
Joseph Heller
#12. As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.
Joseph Heller
#13. There is wisdom in madness, and strong probability of truth in all accusations, for people are complete, and everybody is capable of everything.
Joseph Heller
#14. That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left.
Joseph Heller
#15. Erogenous zones are either everywhere or nowhere.
Joseph Heller
#17. The only thing going on was a war, and no one seemed to notice but Yossarian and Dunbar. And when Yossarian tried to remind people, they drew away from him and thought he was crazy.
Joseph Heller
#18. Orr was one of the homeliest freaks Yossarian had ever encountered, and one of the most attractive.
Joseph Heller
#19. I never even realized I was Jewish until I was practically grown up. Or rather, I used to feel that everybody in the world was Jewish, which amounts to the same thing.
Joseph Heller
#20. And between us now there is this continual underground struggle over something trivial and nebulous that won't abate and has lasted nearly as long as the two of us have known each other. I love you.
Joseph Heller
#21. I've flown over seventy goddam combat missions. Don't talk to me about fighting to save my country. I've been fighting all along to save my country. Now I'm going to fight a little to save myself. The country's not in danger any more, but I am.
Joseph Heller
#22. Where were you born?"
"On a battlefield," [Yossarian] answered.
"No, no. In what state were you born?"
"In a state of innocence.
Joseph Heller
#23. Look, I might keep interested in this if you stop shouting it all over the island and if you stick to killing Colonel Cathcart. But if you're going to turn it into a bloodbath, you can forget about me.
Joseph Heller
#24. I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service.
Joseph Heller
#25. I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy
Joseph Heller
#26. [They] agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.
Joseph Heller
#27. In fact, though the books came slowly, he was a novelist to his bootlaces, an avid narrator who couldn't stop the story once it had started, who felt the terrors of existence so acutely that he had to tell them and tell them until he'd made them something else.
Joseph Heller
#28. Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskoph had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.
Joseph Heller
#29. It was just before dawn during the Great Big Siege of Bologna, when tongueless dead men peopled the night hours like living ghosts and Hungry Joe was half out of his mind with anxiety because he had finished his missions
Joseph Heller
#31. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
Joseph Heller
#32. 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
#33. As soon as there was profit, there were people who wanted to make it, more than they wanted to make anything else.
Joseph Heller
#34. They couldn't keep Death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady.
Joseph Heller
#35. Death was irreversible, he suspected, and he began to think he was going to lose
Joseph Heller
#36. From men motivated by moral certitude, history teaches, no lasting good ever comes.
Joseph Heller
#37. But Yossarian knew he was right, because, as he explained to Clevinger, to the best of his knowledge he had never been wrong.
Joseph Heller
#38. One of the things he wanted to start screaming about was the surgeon's knife that was almost certain to be waiting for him and everyone else who lived long enough to die.
Joseph Heller
#39. Once when Gold was visiting in Florida,his father drew him across the street just to meet some friends and introduced him by saying,"This is my son's brother.The one that never amounted to much.
Joseph Heller
#40. Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.
Joseph Heller
#41. Keep away, keep away," Hungry Joe screamed. "I said keep away, keep away, you goddam stinking lousy son of a bitch." "At least we found out what he dreams about," Dunbar observed wryly. "He dreams about goddam stinking lousy sons of bitches.
Joseph Heller
#43. He's back! He's back!"
"Who's back?" shouted someone else. "Who is it?"
"What does it mean? What should we do?"
"Are we on fire?"
"Get up and run, damn it! Everybody get up and run!
Joseph Heller
#44. Because he needed a friend so desperately, he never found one.
Joseph Heller
#45. The frog is almost five hundred million years old. Could you really say with much certainty that America, with all its strength and prosperity, with its fighting man that is second to none, and with its standard of living that is highest in the world, will last as long as ... the frog?
Joseph Heller
#46. Depreciating motels, junked automobiles, and quick-food joints grow like amber waves of grain.
Joseph Heller
#47. I wonder what kind of person would come out if I ever did erase all my inhibitions at once, what kind of being is bottled up inside me now.
Joseph Heller
#48. Yossarian left money in the old woman's lap - it was odd how many wrongs leaving money seemed to right - and
Joseph Heller
#49. First impressions die slowly, bad impressions take even longer
Joseph Heller
#50. Yossarian was moved by such intense pity for his poverty that he wanted to smash his pale. sad, sickly face with his fist and knock him out of existence
Joseph Heller
#51. Sinking invalids blew kisses to him from windows. Aproned shopkeepers cheered ecstatically from the narrow doorways of their shops. Tubas crumped. Here and there a person fell and was trampled to death.
Joseph Heller
#52. Yossarian was in love with the maid in the lime-colored panties because she seemed to be the only woman left he could make love to without falling in love with.
Joseph Heller
#53. Even when he cheated he couldn't win, because the people he cheated against were always better at cheating too.
Joseph Heller
#54. 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
Joseph Heller
#55. You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate."
"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously.
Joseph Heller
#56. What do you do when it rains?"
The captain answered frankly. "I get wet.
Joseph Heller
#57. 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.
Joseph Heller
#58. General Peckem even recommends that we send our men into combat in full-dress uniform so they'll make a good impression on the enemy when they're shot down.
Joseph Heller
#59. 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.
Joseph Heller
#60. I don't understand the process of imagination-though I know that I am very much at its mercy.
Joseph Heller
#61. [Chief White Halfoat:] Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It's a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger, kike, wop, or spic.
Joseph Heller
#62. She destroyed egos by the score and made men hate themselves in the morning by the way she found them, used them, and tossed them aside.
Joseph Heller
#63. Gold was not altogether certain what, anatomically, a gorge was, but he knew that his was rising.
Joseph Heller
#64. I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals.
Joseph Heller
#65. Appleby was a fair-haired boy from Iowa who believed in God, Motherhood and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any of them, and everybody who knew him liked him.
Joseph Heller
#66. The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.
Joseph Heller
#67. It sure is a pleasure not having Flume around in the mess hall any more. No more of that 'Pass the salt, Walt.'"
"Or 'Pass the bread, Fred.'"
"Or 'Shoot me a beet, Pete.
Joseph Heller
#68. In a world in which success was the only virtue, he had resigned himself to failure.
Joseph Heller
#69. -You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!
Joseph Heller
#70. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.
Joseph Heller
#71. Colonel Cathcart had courage and never hesitated to volunteer his men for any target available.
Joseph Heller
#72. Since he had nothing better to do well in, he did well in school.
Joseph Heller
#73. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.
Joseph Heller
#75. Doc Daneeka was Yossarian's friend and would do just about nothing in his power to help him.
Joseph Heller
#76. 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. In
Joseph Heller
#78. 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.
Joseph Heller
#79. Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Joseph Heller
#80. All over the world, boys on every side of bomb line were laying down their lives for what they had been told was their country, and no one seemed to mind, least of all the boys who were laying down their young lives.
Joseph Heller
#81. Steal Captain Black's car," said Yossarian. "That's what I always do." "We can't steal anybody's car. Since you began stealing the nearest car every time you wanted one, nobody leaves the ignition on.
Joseph Heller
#82. Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.
Joseph Heller
#83. Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office.
Joseph Heller
#84. A nagging bitch of a doubt, burrowing painlessly inside a conscience that felt perfectly clear
Joseph Heller
#85. Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action.
Joseph Heller
#86. Men," he began his address to the officers, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it.
Joseph Heller
#87. I have some decades to spare. Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?
Joseph Heller
#88. I couldn't see tying myself down with a middle-aged woman with four children, even though the woman was my wife and the children were my own.
Joseph Heller
#89. I think that maybe in every company today there is always at least one person who is going crazy slowly.
Joseph Heller
#90. There was no established procedure for evasive action. All you needed was fear, and Yossarian had plenty of that, more fear than Orr or Hungry Joe, more fear even than Dunbar, who had resigned himself submissively to the idea that he must die someday
Joseph Heller
#91. I write longhand and I type and I rewrite on the typed pages.
Joseph Heller
#92. 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
#93. When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'
Joseph Heller
#94. Darling, we're going to have a baby again,' she would say to her husband.
I haven't the time,' Lieutenant Scheisskopf would grumble petulantly. 'Don't you know there's a parade going on?
Joseph Heller
#95. 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.
Joseph Heller
#96. 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
#97. Bribery is against the law, and you know it. But it's not against the law to make a profit, is it? So it can't be against the law for me to bribe someone in order to make a fair profit, can it? No, of course not!
Joseph Heller
#98. Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family.
Joseph Heller
#99. Well, he died. You don't get any older than that.
Joseph Heller
#100. The problem with the loneliness I suffer is that the company of others has never been a cure for it.
Joseph Heller
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