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Joseph Heller Quotes
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Joseph Heller was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is the novel Catch-22, a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice. Wikipedia  

✵ 1. May 1923 – 12. December 1999
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Joseph Heller: 132 quotes6 likes

Joseph Heller Quotes

“How ironic the difference between me and my young son Absalom, between his soliciting the soundest means of overtaking me and having my life, while I was cudgeling my brains for a way to spare his. "Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom," were my mawkish words to my commanders as their men trooped past me toward the positions they would take up in the field outside the wood of Ephraim for the battle in which he would die. "Beware that none touch the young man Absalom," I urged like a fool. No, not like a fool, but like a fond, doting father who will overlook and excuse everything in the child he loves best, and who breaks his heart. And in that singular disparity in our desires abides his lasting victory over me: I loved him and he did not love me.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. And Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Catch-22 (1961)

“The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Catch-22 (1961)

“I think I may have been the first grown man in the world to fall truly, passionately, sexually, romantically and sentimentally in love. I practically invented it.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“Whether God is dead or not hardly matters, for we would use him no differently anyway.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him…Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Catch-22 (1961)

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

Joseph Heller book Something Happened

Something Happened (1974)

“Fools hate knowledge”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“Forever goes quick.”

Joseph Heller book Good as Gold

Good as Gold (1979)

“She knew Pota had a larger respect for personal privacy than he did for God, Congress, or the U. S. Constitution and never looked at anything there except, occasionally, for the remote control to the television set.”

Joseph Heller book Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man

Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man (2000)

“The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. 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.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Catch-22 (1961)