Joseph Heller
Erogenous zones are either everywhere or nowhere.Collection: Body
"Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for." "Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for." "And anything worth dying for," answered the sacrilegious old man, "is certainly worth living for."Collection: Country
The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.Collection: Enemy
And anything worth dying forCollection: Military
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?Collection: Life
You're an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I'm an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I'm in an ideal position to appreciate it.Collection: Taken
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.Collection: Discovery
I am miracle ingredient Z-247. I'm immense. I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman.Collection: Real
Why are they going to disappear him?' I don't know.' It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar.Collection: Disappear
Only Hungry Joe had something better to do each time he finished his missions. He had screaming nightmares and won fist fights with Huple's cat.Collection: Cat
As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.Collection: Crazy
"What would they do to me," he asked in confidential tones, "if I refused to fly them?" "We'd probably shoot you," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied. "We?" Yossarian cried in surprise. "What do you mean, we? Since when are you on their side?" "If you're going to be shot, whose side do you expect me to be on?" ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen retorted.Collection: Mean
Who's they?" He wanted to know. "Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?" "Every one of them," Yossarian told him. "Every one of whom?" "Every one of whom do you think?" "I haven't any idea." "Then how do you know they aren't?" "Because..." Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration. Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn't know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn't funny at all.Collection: Thinking
There are yawning gulfs into which large chunks of me have fallen. I do not always know where I am at present.Collection: Yawning
The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish.Collection: Player
Actually there were many officers' clubs that Yossarian had not helped build, but he was proudest of the one on Pianosa. It was a sturdy and complex monument to his powers of determination. Yossarian never went there to help until it was finished; then he went there often, so pleased was he with the large , fine, rambling shingled building. It was a truly splendid building, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his.Collection: Determination
I don't think the 'what' distinguishes a good novel from a bad one but rather the 'how.'Collection: Thinking
I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazyCollection: Crazy
History did not demand Yossarian's premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; WHICH men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.Collection: Children
He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regretCollection: Regret
Men," he began his address to the officers, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it.Collection: Army
After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. "They asked for volunteers. It's very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back." And he had not written anyone since.Collection: War
Yossarian decided to change the subject. "Now you're changing the subject." he pointed out diplomatically. "I'll bet I can name two things to be miserable about for every one you can name to be thankful for.Collection: Names
There was only one catch and that was Catch22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask, and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. 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.Collection: Crazy
It's a wise person, I guess, who knows he's dumb, and an honest person who knows he's a liar. And it's a dumb person, I guess, whose convinced he's wise...-Bob SlocumCollection: Wise
Let someone else get killed!Collection: Military
It made him proud that 29 months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude.Collection: Genius
Well then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?Collection: Military
I write longhand and I type and I rewrite on the typed pages.Collection: Writing
Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?Collection: Military
I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.Collection: Strong
Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed.Collection: Successful
A man's head is his castle.Collection: Men
I don't think it's good to achieve too much at too early an age. What else can the future give you if you've already got all that your imagination has dreamt up for you? A writer is only discovered once in a lifetime, and if it happens very early the impossibility of matching that moment again can have a somewhat corrosive effect on his personality and indeed on the work itself.Collection: Thinking
Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.Collection: Nurse
Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskoph had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.Collection: Smart
I could not write about a subject sacred to me because I would be too flippant. Fortunately, there are no subjects sacred to me.Collection: Writing
There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy ... There's a catch. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.Collection: Crazy
She was the epitome of stately sorrow each time she smiled.Collection: Sorrow
Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon or burn up.Collection: Hate
Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office.Collection: Office
He found Luciana sitting alone at a table in the Allied officers' night club, where the drunken Anzac major who had brought her there had been stupid enough to desert her for the ribald company of some singing comrades at the bar. "All right, I'll dance with you," she said, before Yossarian could even speak. "But I won't let you sleep with me." "Who asked you?" Yossarian asked her. "You don't want to sleep with me?" she exclaimed with surprise. "I don't want to dance with you.Collection: Stupid
Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family.Collection: Good Family
where are the snowdens of yesteryear?Collection: Yesteryear
Her own body was such a familiar and unremarkable thing to her that she was puzzled by the convulsive ecstasy men could take from it, by the intense and amusing need they had merely to touch it, to reach out urgently and press it, squeeze it, pinch it, rub it. She did not understand Yossarian's lust; but she was willing to take is word for it.Collection: Men
In short, Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains, and everyone knew it except those who soon found it out.Collection: People
That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.Collection: Catch 22 Important
The promises of maniacs, like those of women, are not safely relied upon.Collection: Promise
Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet people. It provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble.Collection: Exercise