Quotes from Joseph Heller

Rise above principal and do what's right.

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.

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.

I'm cold,' Snowden said softly, 'I'm cold.' 'You're going to be all right, kid,' Yossarian reassured him with a grin. 'You're going to be all right.' 'I'm cold,' Snowden said again in a frail, childlike voice. 'I'm cold.' 'There, there,' Yossarian said, because he did not know what else to say. 'There, there.' 'I'm cold,' Snowden whimpered. 'I'm cold.' 'There, there. There, there.

When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering.

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?

It made him proud that 29 months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude.

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.

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.

That's some catch, that Catch-22,' he observed. 'It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed. Yossarian saw it clearly in all its spinning reasonableness. There was an elliptical precision about its perfect pairs of parts that was graceful and shocking, like good modern art, and at times Yossarian wasn't quite sure that he saw it at all, just the way he was never quite sure about good modern art…

He made so many people uneasy. Everyone was always very friendly toward him, and no one was ever very nice; everyone spoke to him, and no one ever said anything.

Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action.