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Joseph Heller -
Catch-22 (1961)
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All over the world, boys on every side of the 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. There was no end in sight.
Joseph Heller
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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
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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
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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
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When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.
Joseph Heller
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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
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Outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.
Joseph Heller
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Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy.
Joseph Heller
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You're an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I'm an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I'm in an ideal position to appreciate it.
Joseph Heller
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Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office.
Joseph Heller
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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
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Hungry Joe collected lists of fatal diseases and arranged them in alphabetical order so that he could put his finger without delay on any one he wanted to worry about.
Joseph Heller
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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
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Major Major had lied, and it was good. He was not really surprised that it was good, for he had observed that people who did lie were, on the whole, more resourceful and ambitious and successful than people who did not lie.
Joseph Heller
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-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
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You wouldn't be normal if you were never afraid. Even the bravest men experience fear. One of the biggest jobs we all face in combat is to overcome fear.
Joseph Heller
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Only Hungry Joe had something better to do each time he finished his missions. He had screaming nightmares and won fist fights with Huple's cat.
Joseph Heller
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Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet people. It provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble.
Joseph Heller
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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
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He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
Joseph Heller
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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
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What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.
Joseph Heller
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Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.
Joseph Heller
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Climb, you bastard! Climb, climb, climb, climb!
Joseph Heller
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When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.
Joseph Heller
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Quote of the day
Yet would we die as some have done: Beating a way for the rising sun.
Arna Bontemps
Joseph Heller
Creative Commons
Born:
May 1, 1923
Died:
December 12, 1999
(aged 76)
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