Joseph Heller Quotes

141 Sourced Quotes

In my middle years, I have exchanged the position of the fetus for the position of a corpse.

Joseph Heller
I hate God and I hate life. And the closer I come to death, the more I hate life.

Joseph Heller
The problem with the loneliness I suffer is that the company of others has never been a cure for it.

Joseph Heller
Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.

Joseph Heller
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
A sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age.

Joseph Heller
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
Kissinger brought peace to Vietnam the same way Napoleon brought peace to Europe: by losing.

Joseph Heller
There was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to.

Joseph Heller
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
Gold was not altogether certain what, anatomically, a gorge was, but he knew that his was rising.

Joseph Heller
It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.

Joseph Heller
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
Fortunately, just when things were blackest, the war broke out.

Joseph Heller
He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.

Joseph Heller
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
Her own body was such a familiar and unremarkable thing to her that she was puzzled by the convulsive ecstasy men could take from it, by the intense and amusing need they had merely to touch it, to reach out urgently and press it, squeeze it, pinch it, rub it. She did not understand Yossarian's lust; but she was willing to take is word for it.

Joseph Heller
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
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.

Joseph Heller
Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon or burn up.

Joseph Heller
A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural.

Joseph Heller
While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it.

Joseph Heller
Anything worth dying for... is certainly worth living for.

Joseph Heller
Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.

Joseph Heller
No one lusting for blood is ever innocent. Or satisfied. I have not been innocent. Or satisfied. Just as the man who wants silver will not be satisfied with silver, a man who wants the blood of another will not be satisfied with having that blood, nor the woman with jewels be satisfied with jewels, and the man who wants women will not be satisfied with women. Don't try telling me different. Haven't I looked about me in the city and seen how all labor is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not filled? Don't I know myself that no want is ever satisfied? Wishes are granted, goals attained. But wants? Forget them. They live as long as the person they inhabit.

Joseph Heller
"Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?"
"There is no heaven. There is no hell."
"There is no heaven? There is no hell?"
"That's all in your mind."

Joseph Heller
I think that maybe in every company today there is always at least one person who is going crazy slowly.

Joseph Heller
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
He could never decide whether to furgle them or photograph them, for he had found it impossible to do both simultaneously.

Joseph Heller
I am arrogant enough to wish I were modest as he and modest enough to know that this is arrogance.

Joseph Heller