Quotes from Joseph Heller

Why can't you be a fatalist about it the way I am? If I'm destined to unload these lighters at a profit and pick up some Egyptian cotton cheap from Milo, then that's what I'm going to do. And if you're destined to be killed over Bologna, then you're going to be killed, so you might just as well go out and die like a man. I hate to say this, Yossarian, but you're turning into a chronic complainer

Bless you, my boy. Have a horseshoe." "Thank you, sir. What should I do with it?" "Throw it." "Away?" "At that peg there. Then pick it up and throw it at this

The men were perfectly content to fly as manny missions as we asked them as long as thought they had no alternative. Now you've given them hope, and they're unhappy. So the blame is all yours.

Bless you, my boy. Have a horseshoe." "Thank you, sir. What should I do with it?" "Throw it." "Away?" "At that peg there. Then pick it up and throw it at this peg. It's a game, see? You get the horseshoe back.

I try not to think of that," Major Danby admitted frankly. "I try to concentrate on only the big result and to forget that they are succeeding, too. I try to pretend that they are not significant." "That's my trouble, you know," Yossarian mused sympathetically, folding his arms. "Between me and every ideal I always find Scheisskopfs, Peckems, Korns and Cathcarts. And that sort of changes the ideal.

He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt...

Sweden?" he cried. "Orr!" cried the chaplain. "Orr?" cried Yossarian. "Sweden!" cried the chaplain, shaking his head up and down with gleeful rapture and prancing about uncontrollably from spot to spot in a grinning, delicious frenzy. "It's a miracle, I tell you! A miracle! I believe in God again. I really do. Washed ashore in Sweden after so many weeks at sea! It's a miracle.

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.

Don't you see what that means? Now you can take me off combat duty and send me home. They're not going to send a crazy man out to be killed, are they?" "Who else will go?

I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.

the colonel surged to his feet like a gigantic belch

Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.