Quotes from Joseph Heller

The years are too short, the days are too long.

You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age?

I only raped her once," he explained. Yossarian was aghast. "But you killed her, Aarfy! You killed her!" "Oh, I had to do that after I raped her," Aarfy replied in his most condescending manner.

To pray for their safety was to pray for the death of other young men he did not even know.

Fuck my superiors,' I decided, when I saw that most of my superiors were not superior. Years later I read where Camus said that the only freedom we have is the freedom to say no. You ever read Camus?

Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. That's some catch, that Catch-22, he observed. It's the best there is, Doc Daneeka agreed.

I have some decades to spare. Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?

What does the fish remind you of?" "Other fish." "And what do the other fish remind you of?" "Other fish." Major Sanderson sat back disappointedly. "Do you like fish?" "Not especially.

And you can't let crazy people decide whether you're crazy or not, can you?

It takes very little to make us [women] happy, and more than is contained in heaven and earth to keep us that way

He smiled ostentatiously to show himself reasonable and nice. I'm not saying that to be cruel and insulting, he continued with cruel and insulting delight.

The enemy, retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on

They couldn't him because he was Tarzan, Mandrake, Flash Gordon. He was Bill Shakespeare. He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Dreirdre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees. He was miracle ingredient Z-247.

Szégyenkezve és reménykedve keresett új kapcsolatokat, és mindig kiábrándult. Mert olyan elkeseredetten keresett barátokat, sohasem talált egyet se.

Now, where were we? Read me back the last line.' 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take shorthand. 'Not my last line, stupid!' the colonel shouted. 'Somebody else's.' 'Read me back the last line.' read back the corporal. 'That's my last line again!' shrieked the colonel, turning purple with anger. 'Oh, no, sir,' corrected the corporal. 'That's my last line. I read it to you just a moment ago. Don't you remember, sir? It was only a moment ago.

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

When I learned you were sick , I finally felt old for the first time. You will recover, and I never will.

Why,' swore Yossarian at him approvingly, 'you evil-eyed, mechanically-aptituded, disaffiliated son of a -----, did you walk around with anything in your cheeks?' 'I didn't,' Orr said, 'walk around with anything in my cheeks. I walked around with crab apples in my cheeks. When I couldn't get crab apples, I walked around with horse chestnuts. In my cheeks.

Yossarian was moved by such intense pity for his poverty that he wanted to smash his pale, sad, sickly face with his fist and knock him out of existence because he brought to mind all the pale, sad, sickly children in Italy that same night who needed haircuts and needed shoes and socks.

Colonel Cathcart had courage and never hesitated to volunteer his men for any target available.

He felt awkward because she was going to murder him.

You know, that's my trouble," he groaned. "I never listen to anybody. Somebody kept telling me to put my headlights on, but I just wouldn't listen.

There was shish-kabob for lunch, huge, savory hunks of spitted meat sizzling like the devil over charcoal after marinating seventy-two hours in a secret mixture Milo had stolen from a crooked trader in the Levant, served with Iranian rice and asparagus tips Parmesan, followed by cherries jubilee for dessert and then steaming cups of fresh coffee with Benedictine and brandy.

You pompous, rotund, neighborly, vacuous, complacent... - Yossarian