Quotes from Joseph Heller

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.

They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly. No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried. Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked. They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone." And what difference does that make?

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.

It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.

He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it

They] agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.

Insanity is contagious.

It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

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.

Why are they going to disappear him?' I don't know.' It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar.

The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

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.

The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.

Be glad you're even alive.' Be furious you're going to die.

From now on I'm thinking only of me." Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: "But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way." "Then," said Yossarian, "I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?

I want to keep my dreams, even bad ones, because without them, I might have nothing all night long.

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.

Every writer I know has trouble writing.

There is no disappointment so numbing...as someone no better than you achieving more.

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

Well, he died. You don't get any older than that.

I do not have, and never had, any interest in either the Bible or religion.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

The idea of using actual clippings came about as a way of characterizing Gold. Gold uses clippings because he hates doing research and is not even really interested in the books and articles he writes.