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Joseph Heller
80 quotes
“When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, "Who has?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations (1997) edited by Peter Kemp, p. 303
“Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts — and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Heller's legacy will be 'Catch-22' ideas" at CNN (13 December 1999)
“It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From now on I'm thinking only of me.” Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: “But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way?” “Then,” said Yossarian, “I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let someone else get killed!" "Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?" "Well then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Climb, you bastard! Climb, climb, climb, climb!”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yossarian — the very sight of the name made him shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, suspicious, fascist and Communist.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You know, that might be the answer — to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don't make the profit. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him...Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably.... It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He could never decide whether to furgle them or photograph them, for he had found it impossible to do both simultaneously.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: pp.53-54. Dell 1962 edition. (First use of "furgle" in the United States.)
“The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The yellow moon turned orange and was soon red as the setting sun.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I said it again as a German might. "Rabinovitz. Ich bin Lew Rabinowitz, LR, von Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York. Du Kennst?" And then I spoke Yiddish. "Und ich bin ein Yid. Farshtest?" And then in English. "I am a Jew. Understand?" And then in my fractured German. "Ich bin Jude. Verstehst?" Now they didn't know where to look, but they did not want to look at me. I've got blue eyes that can turn into slits of ice, Claire still tells me, and a pale, European skin that can turn red fast when I laugh hard or get mad, and I wasn't sure they believed me.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was no way of knowing anything, he knew, not even that there was no way of knowing anything.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I get the willies when I see closed doors. Even at work, where I am doing so well now, the sight of a closed door is sometimes enough to make me dread that something horrible is happening behind it, something that is going to affect me adversely; if I am tired and dejected from a night of lies or booze or sex or just nerves and insomnia, I can almost smell the disaster mounting invisibly and flooding out toward me through the frosted glass panes. My hands may perspire, and my voice may come out strange. I wonder why. Something must have happened to me sometime.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do know that girls in their early twenties are easy and sweet. (Girls in their late twenties are easier but sad, and that isn't so sweet.) They are easy, I think, because they are sweet, and they are sweet, I think, because they are dumb.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The years are too short, the days are too long.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I grow up I want to be a little boy.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my middle years, I have exchanged the position of the fetus for the position of a corpse.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Women my wife's age with broken marriages take up robustly with fellows much younger than themselves, sometimes boys, and their husbands don't like that part of it at all. (It's a means they have of really sticking it to us. The husbands can do without the money and kids. But they can't abide their wives' humping a younger dick and letting everyone know.)”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Women don't suffer from penis envy. Men do.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Forever goes quick.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gold was opposed to segregation and equally opposed to integration. Certainly he did not believe that women or homosexuals should suffer persecution or discrimination. On the other hand, he was privately opposed to all equal rights amendments, for he certainly did not want members of either group associating with him on levels of equality or familiarity.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether God is dead or not hardly matters, for we would use him no differently anyway.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The promises of maniacs, like those of women, are not safely relied upon.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I hate God and I hate life. And the closer I come to death, the more I hate life.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think I may have been the first grown man in the world to fall truly, passionately, sexually, romantically and sentimentally in love. I practically invented it.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Didn't I once observe that there is nothing new under the sun?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is potent stuff, isn't it?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery or simple bad luck.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The wise man dies no better or more wisely than the fool. In what way, then, is the wise man wise?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He [God] owes me an apology too- at the very least. I'm not saying I shouldn't have been punished for those sins I committed. I'm saying that the punishments he chose were inhuman. I wonder what favor I'd want. I think I may be afraid to ask for it. I'm afraid He won't grant it. I'm more afraid that He will. Wouldn't it be tragic to find out that He really has been here all this time?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God does have this self-serving habit of putting all blame for His own mistakes on other people, doesn't He? He picks someone arbitrarily, unbidden, right out of the blue so to speak, and levies upon them tasks of monumental difficulty for which we don't always measure up in every particular, then charges US for HIS error in selecting imperfectly. He tends to forget that we are no more infallible than He is.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When one is infatuated, faults are endearing that in others would be heinous.”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source