Quotes from Joseph Heller

He was pinched perspinngly in the epistemological dilemma of the skeptic, unable to accept solutions to problems he was unwilling to dismiss as unsolvable. He was never without misery, and never without hope.

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.

Não me confunde coisa nenhuma. Fico simplesmente irritado por julgarem que não passo de um pateta. Pensam que são espertos e todos nós estúpidos.

He was genuinely sorry for Yossarian; when Yossarian realized that, he was genuinely sorry for Rogoff.

Gimme eat, I said," he ordered loudly in harsh tones that rumbled ominously through the silent tent like claps of distant thunder.

There was a humorless irony in the ludicrous panic of the man screaming for help to the police while policemen were all around him.

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.

He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.

How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so.

There's no patriotism, that's what it is. And no matriotism, either.

To simulate gravity, feign grief and pretend supernatural intelligence of the hereafter in so fearsome and arcane a circumstance as death seemed the most criminal of offenses.

His childhood had been a pleasant, though disciplined, one. He got on well with his brothers and sisters, and he did not hate his mother and father, even though they had both been very good to him.

It was one thing to maintain liaison with the Lord, and they were all in favor of that; it was something else, though, to have Him hanging around twenty-four hours a day.

Show me anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new, and I will show you it hath been.

That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

And if that wasn't funny, there were lots of things that weren't even funnier.

as pessoas com mentes manifestavam por vezes tendência para se tornar espertas.

À semelhança das medalhas olímpicas e troféus de ténis, significavam apenas que o possuidor fizera algo sem vantagem para ninguém mais eficientemente que qualquer outra pessoa.

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.

Kai dvasios nebelieka, žmogus virsta šiukšle.

Each morning they came around, three brisk and serious men with efficient mouths and inefficient eyes...

Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did.

kid I wanted apple cheeks someday, and I decided to work at it until I got them, and by God, I did work at it until I got them, and that's how I did it, with crab apples in my cheeks

Homer begged and Rembrandt went bankrupt. Aristotle, who had money for books, his school, and his museum, could not have bought this painting of himself. Rembrandt could not afford a Rembrandt.