Quotes from Joseph Heller

Metcalf, is that your foot I'm stepping on?' 'No, sir. It must be Lieutenant Scheisskopf's foot.' 'It isn't my foot,' said Lieutenant Scheisskopf. 'Then maybe it is my foot after all,' said Major Metcalf. 'Move it.' 'Yes, sir. You'll have to move your foot first, colonel. It's on top of mine.' 'Are you telling me to move my foot?' 'No, sir. Oh, no, sir.

Just pass the work I assign along to somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation of responsibility.

Chocolate-covered cotton.

he had grown too old for fun, he no longer had the time.

How did I get here? Somebody pushed me. Somebody must have set me off in this direction and clusters of other hands must have touched themselves to the controls at various times, for I would not have picked this way for the world.

You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate." "Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously.

Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.

The war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals. All over the world, boy on every side of the bomb line were laying down their lives for what they had been told was their country .

Sure there's a catch,' Doc Daneeka replied. 'Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.' There

Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning. Garroting.

In parts of Africa little boys were still stolen away by adult slave traders and sold for money to men who disemboweled them and ate them.

There were usually not nearly as many sick people inside the hospital as Yossarian saw outside the hospital, and there were generally fewer people inside the hospital who were seriously sick. There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate.

Mudd was the unknown soldier who had never had a chance, for that was the only thing anyone ever did know about all the unknown soldiers—they never had a chance. They had to be dead.

When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, Who has?

He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism.

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." "Do you think it will work?" "I'm sure it will. And let's promote him to captain, too, just to make certain.

Hasn't it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of sexual impotence?' 'Yes, sir, it has.' 'Then why do you do it?' 'To assuage my fears of sexual impotence.

You're wrong," answered the old man. "Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet people. It provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble.

Then you're up shit creek, Popinjay, without a paddle.

You began in a sperm cell as a strand of DNA that still doesn't know who you are.

no craving for wealth or immortality could be so great, he felt, as to subsist on the sorrow of children.

Some men were born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. Major Major was all three.

Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.' There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.

Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning. Garroting. That's what justice is when we've all got to be tough enough and rough enough to fight Billy Petrolle. From the hip. Get it?