Quotes from book
God Knows

God Knows
Joseph Heller

God Knows is a tragicomedic novel written by Joseph Heller and published in 1984.

Joseph Heller photo

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

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Joseph Heller photo

“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)

Joseph Heller photo

“If the chance ever comes to you to fall in love, grab it, every time. You might always live to regret it, but you won't find anything to beat it, and you won't know if it will come to you once more.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Joseph Heller photo

“He who steals my purse steals trash, but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

Shakespeare's Othello said it first.
God Knows (1984)

Joseph Heller photo

“He [God] owes me an apology too- at the very least. I'm not saying I shouldn't have been punished for those sins I committed. I'm saying that the punishments he chose were inhuman. I wonder what favor I'd want. I think I may be afraid to ask for it. I'm afraid He won't grant it. I'm more afraid that He will. Wouldn't it be tragic to find out that He really has been here all this time?”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Joseph Heller photo

“Didn't I once observe that there is nothing new under the sun?”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Joseph Heller photo

“The problem with the loneliness I suffer is that the company of others has never been a cure for it.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Joseph Heller photo

“If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Joseph Heller photo

“God is a murderer, imagine that. I told you I had the best story in the Bible, didn't I? I have always known that He was. Sooner or later He murders us all, doesn't He, and we go back to the dust from which we came. So I'm no longer scared to defy him. All He can do is kill me.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Joseph Heller photo

“God does have this self-serving habit of putting all blame for His own mistakes on other people, doesn't He? He picks someone arbitrarily, unbidden, right out of the blue so to speak, and levies upon them tasks of monumental difficulty for which we don't always measure up in every particular, then charges US for HIS error in selecting imperfectly. He tends to forget that we are no more infallible than He is.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Joseph Heller photo

“I imagine that God Himself frequently wants to feel like a king. Why else would He create the world?”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Joseph Heller photo

“The last thing any sensible human being should want is immortality. As it is, life lasts too long for most of us.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Joseph Heller photo

“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)

Joseph Heller photo

“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)

Joseph Heller photo

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

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Joseph Heller photo

“Fools hate knowledge”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)