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A sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age.
Joseph Heller
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Sure, that's what I mean,' Doc Daneeka said. 'A little grease is what makes this world go round. One hand washes the other. Know what I mean? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.' Yossarian knew what he meant. That's not what I meant,' Doc Daneeka said, as Yossarian began scratching his back.
Joseph Heller
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Kissinger brought peace to Vietnam the same way Napoleon brought peace to Europe: by losing.
Joseph Heller
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There was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to.
Joseph Heller
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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
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Gold was not altogether certain what, anatomically, a gorge was, but he knew that his was rising.
Joseph Heller
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It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.
Joseph Heller
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When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering.
Joseph Heller
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Fortunately, just when things were blackest, the war broke out.
Joseph Heller
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He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.
Joseph Heller
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No one who ever wants praise will be satisfied with praise, the person who wants love cannot be satisfied with love. No want is ever fulfilled. And therefore I still don't know whether it is better to fear God and keep His commandments or to curse God and die.
Joseph Heller
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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
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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
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It got me so excited that I did what the cliché says you're supposed to do: I jumped out of bed and paced the floor. That morning I went to my job at the advertising agency and wrote out the first chapter in longhand.... One year later, after much planning, I began chapter two.
Joseph Heller
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Now you've given them hope, and they're unhappy. So the blame is all yours.
Joseph Heller
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History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind. Surely, Watt with his steam engine, Faraday with his electric motor, and Edison with his incandescent light bulb did not have it as their goal to contribute to a fuel shortage some day that would place their countries at the mercy of Arab oil.
Joseph Heller
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I've come to look upon death the same way I look upon root-canal work. Everyone else seems to get through it all right, so it couldn't be too difficult for me.
Joseph Heller
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She was a crazy mathematics major from the Wharton School of Business who could not count to twenty-eight each month without getting into trouble.
Joseph Heller
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Yossarian had so many ailments to be afraid of that he was sometimes tempted to turn himself in to the hospital for good and spend the rest of his life stretched out there inside an oxygen tent with a battery of specialists and nurses seated at one side of his bed twenty-four hours a day waiting for something to go wrong..
Joseph Heller
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If a man is going to leave one wife to marry another, it's better if he divorces the first before he marries the second.
Joseph Heller
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How do you expect anyone to believe you have a liver condition if you keep squeezing the nurses' tits every time you get a chance? You're going to have to give up sex if you want to convince people you've got an ailing liver.
Joseph Heller
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Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.
Joseph Heller
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Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.
Joseph Heller
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I don't believe in miracles because it's been a long time since we've had any.
Joseph Heller
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In the long run, failure was the only thing that worked predictably. All else was accidental.
Joseph Heller
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
Joseph Heller
Creative Commons
Born:
May 1, 1923
Died:
December 12, 1999
(aged 76)
Bio:
Joseph Heller was an American satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright.
Known for:
Catch-22 (1961)
Something Happened (1974)
God Knows (1984)
Closing Time (1994)
Good as Gold (1979)
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