Quotes by Joseph Heller

About Joseph Heller:

Joseph Heller is an impossibility, and regardless of choice, a same negative outcome is a certainty. Although he is remembered primarily for Catch-22, his other works center on the lives of various members of the middle class and remain examples of modern satire.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

She reminded him of (...) all the shivering, stupefying misery in a world that never yet had provided enough heat and food and justice for all but an ingenious and unscrupulous handful. What a lousy earth!

Joseph Heller

Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. '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...

Joseph Heller

...You know, one good apple can spoil the rest,” Colonel Korn concluded with conscious irony.

Joseph Heller

No such private nights of ecstasy or hushed-up drinking and sex orgies ever occurred. They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the c...

Joseph Heller

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?" "Beca...

Joseph Heller

[Chief White Halfoat:] Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It's a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger, kike, wop, or spic.

Joseph Heller

It doesn't matter whether they mean it or not. That's why they make little kids pledge allegiance even before they know what 'pledge' and 'allegiance' mean.

Joseph Heller

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 da...

Joseph Heller

All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars.

Joseph Heller

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.

Joseph Heller

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 l...

Joseph Heller

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

Joseph Heller

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.

Joseph Heller

It takes very little to make us [women] happy, and more than is contained in heaven and earth to keep us that way

Joseph Heller

So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that ...

Joseph Heller

There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how...

Joseph Heller

General Peckem even recommends that we send our men into combat in full-dress uniform so they'll make a good impression on the enemy when they're shot down".

Joseph Heller

Depreciating motels, junked automobiles, and quick-food joints grow like amber waves of grain.

Joseph Heller

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.

Joseph Heller

I frequently feel I'm being taken advantage of merely because I'm asked to do the work I'm paid to do.

Joseph Heller

Author Bio

  • NameJoseph Heller
  • DescriptionAmerican author
  • BornMay 1, 1923
  • DiedDecember 12, 1999
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Screenwriter; Novelist; Playwright
  • WorksCatch-22; Something Happened