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Joseph Heller: 264 quotes6 likes

“Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts — and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?”

Joseph Heller

As quoted in "Heller's legacy will be 'Catch-22' ideas" at CNN (13 December 1999) http://archives.cnn.com/1999/books/news/12/13/heller/index.html

“I get the willies when I see closed doors. Even at work, where I am doing so well now, the sight of a closed door is sometimes enough to make me dread that something horrible is happening behind it, something that is going to affect me adversely; if I am tired and dejected from a night of lies or booze or sex or just nerves and insomnia, I can almost smell the disaster mounting invisibly and flooding out toward me through the frosted glass panes. My hands may perspire, and my voice may come out strange. I wonder why. Something must have happened to me sometime.”

Joseph Heller book Something Happened

Opening Lines
Something Happened (1974)

“Love is potent stuff, isn't it?”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“Gold was opposed to segregation and equally opposed to integration. Certainly he did not believe that women or homosexuals should suffer persecution or discrimination. On the other hand, he was privately opposed to all equal rights amendments, for he certainly did not want members of either group associating with him on levels of equality or familiarity.”

Joseph Heller book Good as Gold

Good as Gold (1979)

“I'm not even sure we really had that much need for God as much as we did seem to have a need to believe in Him.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. "This long." He snapped his fingers. "A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man."
"Old?" asked Clevinger with surprise. "What are you talking about?"
"Old."
"I'm not old."
"You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?" Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.
"Well, maybe it is true," Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. "Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

"I do," Dunbar told him.
"Why?" Clevinger asked.
"What else is there?"
Catch-22 (1961)

“Now THERE'S a hollow state to be in, isn't it — to believe in God and get no sign that He's there.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“I am arrogant enough to wish I were modest as he and modest enough to know that this is arrogance.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“No one lusting for blood is ever innocent. Or satisfied. I have not been innocent. Or satisfied. Just as the man who wants silver will not be satisfied with silver, a man who wants the blood of another will not be satisfied with having that blood, nor the woman with jewels be satisfied with jewels, and the man who wants women will not be satisfied with women. Don't try telling me different. Haven't I looked about me in the city and seen how all labor is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not filled? Don't I know myself that no want is ever satisfied? Wishes are granted, goals attained. But wants? Forget them. They live as long as the person they inhabit.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“In my middle years, I have exchanged the position of the fetus for the position of a corpse.”

Joseph Heller book Something Happened

Something Happened (1974)

“Vanity. What's wrong with vanity? It doesn't satisfy.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Catch-22 (1961)

“There was no way of knowing anything, he knew, not even that there was no way of knowing anything.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961), pp. 266

“If character is destiny, the good are damned.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Opening Lines
Catch-22 (1961)

“All is vanity, you know, ALL in the long run is but vanity and vexation of spirit.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“Yossarian — the very sight of the name made him shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, suspicious, fascist and Communist.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Catch-22 (1961)