Joseph Heller citations

Page 3

“Le souffle vital envolé, l'homme n'est que tripaille.”

“Les idéaux sont bons, mais les gens le sont parfois un peu moins.”

“Se défiler devant les problèmes ne les a jamais résolus.”

“Il faut de l'intelligence pour ne pas gagner d'argent.”

“Pour l'homme de science, toutes les agonies se valent.”

“L'occasion ne frappe qu'une seule fois à votre porte.”

“S'il acceptait de partir, il était fou et devait en être dispensé, mais s'il refusait, c'est qu'il était sain d'esprit et n'avait plus dès lors droit à une dispense.”

“Un mort se fout complètement de qui a gagné la guerre.”

“Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousy chain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all.”

“But how can one be warm alone?”

“Major Major had lied, and it was good. He was not really surprised that it was good, for he had observed that people who did lie were, on the whole, more resourceful and ambitious and successful than people who did not lie.”

“Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.”

“Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.”

“He was one of those people with lots of intelligence but no brains”

“You wouldn’t be normal if you were never afraid. Even the bravest men experience fear. One of the biggest jobs we all face in combat is to overcome fear.”

“All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars.”

“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. That's some catch, that catch-22.”

“They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him.”

“God had no need for Ecclesiastes to acquaint Him with vanity.”

“The God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.”

“Everybody is as unstable as water.”

“Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy.”

“No one who ever wants praise will be satisfied with praise, the person who wants love cannot be satisfied with love. No want is ever fulfilled. And therefore I still don't know whether it is better to fear God and keep His commandments or to curse God and die.”

“Nothing fails like success.”

“I hate God and I hate life. And the closer I come to death, the more I hate life.”

“I do know that girls in their early twenties are easy and sweet. (Girls in their late twenties are easier but sad, and that isn't so sweet.) They are easy, I think, because they are sweet, and they are sweet, I think, because they are dumb.”

“The promises of maniacs, like those of women, are not safely relied upon.”

“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?”

“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.”

“Love is potent stuff, isn't it?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

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

“The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don't you know history?”

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

“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.”