Quotes from Joseph Heller

symptoms: an unreasonable belief that everyone around him was crazy, a homicidal impulse to machine-gun strangers, retrospective falsification, an unfounded suspicion that people hated him and were conspiring to kill him.

Darling, we're going to have a baby again,' she would say to her husband. I haven't the time,' Lieutenant Scheisskopf would grumble petulantly. 'Don't you know there's a parade going on?

Her own body was such a familiar and unremarkable thing to her that she was puzzled by the convulsive ecstasy men could take from it, by the intense and amusing need they had merely to touch it, to reach out urgently and press it, squeeze it, pinch it, rub it. She did not understand Yossarian's lust; but she was willing to take is word for it.

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

Because it's better to die on one's feet that+n live on one's knees, Nately retorted with triumphant and lofty convivtion. I guess you've heard that saying before. Yes, I certainly have, mused the treacherous old man, smiling again. But I'm afraid you have it backward. It is better to live on one's feet than die on one's knees.

Clevinger is a very bright guy, a Harvard man, who knows everything about literature except how to enjoy it.

Oh, they're there all right, Orr had assured him about the flies in Appleby's eyes after Yossarian's fist fight in the officers' club, although he probably doesn't even know it. That's why he can't see things as they really are. How come he doesn't know it? inquired Yossarian. Because he's got flies in his eyes, Orr explained with exaggerated patience. How can he see he's got flies in his eyes if he's got flies in his eyes?

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.

Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a world war we hadn't a chance of winning. But now that we are losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better, and we will certainly come out on top again if we succeed in being defeated.

Oh, I´m not complaining. I know there´s a war on. I know a lot of people are going to have to suffer for us to win it. But why must I be one of them?¨

The night was full of horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a ward full of nuts.......

Of course you're dying. We're all dying. Where the devil else do you think you're heading?

Why don't you ever whip me? she pouted one night. Because I haven't the time, he snapped at her impatiently. I haven't the time. Don't you know there's a parade going on?

All you've got to do is lie there a few minutes and die a little.

Last night in the latrine. Didn't you whisper that we couldn't punish you to that other dirty son of a bitch we don't like? What's his name? Yossarian, sir, Lieutenant Scheisskopf said. Yes, Yossarian. That's right. Yossarian. Yossarian? Is that his name? Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian? Lieutenant Scheisskopf had the facts at his finger tips. It's Yossarian's name, sir, he explained.

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

But I'm afraid you have it backward. It is better to live on one's feet than die on one's knees. That is the way the saying goes.

i know at last what i want to be when i grow up. when i grow up i want to be a little boy.

Impressionable men in the squadron like Dobbs and Captain Flume were so deeply disturbed by Hungry Joe's shrieking nightmares that they woudl begin to have shrieking nightmares of their own, and the piercing obscenities they flung into the air every night from their separate places in the squadron rang against each other in the darkness romantically like the mating calls of songbirds with filthy minds.

You've been unable to adjust to the idea of war.' 'Yes, sir.' 'You have a morbid aversion to dying.

Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.

I get the willies when I see closed doors.

It sure is a pleasure not having Flume around in the mess hall any more. No more of that 'Pass the salt, Walt.' Or 'Pass the bread, Fred.' Or 'Shoot me a beet, Pete.

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.