Quotes from Joseph Heller

That's not what justice is, the colonel jeered, and began pounding the table again with his big fat hand. That's what Karl Marx is. I'll tell you what justice is. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning. Garroting. That's what justice is when we've all got to be tough enough and rough enough to fight Billy Petrolle. From the hip. Get it?

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.

People have a right to do anything that's not forbidden by law, and there's no law against lying to you.

The frog is almost five hundred million years old. Could you really say with much certainty that America, with all its strength and prosperity, with its fighting man that is second to none, and with its standard of living that is highest in the world, will last as long as...the frog?

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.

Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office.

the colonel surged to his feet like a gigantic belch

Frankly I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.

I don't want to make sacrifices. I want to make dough.

Everyone agreed that Clevinger was certain to go far in the academic world. In short, Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains

Death was irreversible, he suspected

Actually, he was a very warm, compassionate man who never stopped feeling sorry for himself. "Why me?" was his constant lament, and the question was a good one.