Joseph Heller - God Knows (1984)

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The last thing any sensible human being should want is immortality. As it is, life lasts too long for most of us.

Joseph Heller
God had no need for Ecclesiastes to acquaint Him with vanity.

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

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

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

Joseph Heller
Didn't I once observe that there is nothing new under the sun?

Joseph Heller
Now THERE'S a hollow state to be in, isn't it — to believe in God and get no sign that He's there.

Joseph Heller
When one is infatuated, faults are endearing that in others would be heinous.

Joseph Heller
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
All is vanity, you know, ALL in the long run is but vanity and vexation of spirit.

Joseph Heller
If the chance ever comes to you to fall in love, grab it, every time. You might always live to regret it, but you won't find anything to beat it, and you won't know if it will come to you once more.

Joseph Heller
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
Whether God is dead or not hardly matters, for we would use him no differently anyway.

Joseph Heller
God is a murderer, imagine that. I told you I had the best story in the Bible, didn't I? I have always known that He was. Sooner or later He murders us all, doesn't He, and we go back to the dust from which we came. So I'm no longer scared to defy him. All He can do is kill me.

Joseph Heller
He who steals my purse steals trash, but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed. (Shakespeare's Othello said it first.)

Joseph Heller
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
The promises of maniacs, like those of women, are not safely relied upon.

Joseph Heller
Vanity. What's wrong with vanity? It doesn't satisfy.

Joseph Heller
I imagine that God Himself frequently wants to feel like a king. Why else would He create the world?

Joseph Heller
The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don't you know history?

Joseph Heller
The wise man dies no better or more wisely than the fool. In what way, then, is the wise man wise?

Joseph Heller
I'm not even sure we really had that much need for God as much as we did seem to have a need to believe in Him.

Joseph Heller
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
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
How dispiriting I find it, even after all my personal triumphs, that we must grow up and grow sad, that we must age, weaken, and in time go home to our long home in the ground, and that even golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust.

Joseph Heller