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Joseph Heller Quotes | Quotes said by Joseph Heller

  • Joseph Heller Quote #1

    -You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!


  • Joseph Heller Quote #2

    ...He was irritable with Orr, who had found two crab apples somewhere and walked with them in his cheeks until Yossarian spied them there and made him take them out. Then Orr found two horse chestnuts somewhere and slipped those in until Yossarian detected them and snapped at him again to take the crab apples out of his mouth. Orr grinned and replied that they were not crab apples but horse chestnuts and that they were not in his mouth but in his hands, but Yossarian was not able to understand a single word he said because of the horse chestnuts in his mouth and made him take them out anyway.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #3

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

  • Joseph Heller Quote #4

    [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 Quote #5

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

  • Joseph Heller Quote #6

    Because he needed a friend so desperately, he never found one.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #7

    Being born with a sickly resemblance to Henry Fonda was the first of a long series of practical jokes of which destiny was to make Major Major the unhappy victim throughout his joyless life. Being born Major Major Major was the second

  • Joseph Heller Quote #8

    But Yossarian knew he was right, because, as he explained to Clevinger, to the best of his knowledge he had never been wrong.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #9

    Colonel Cathcart is our commanding officer and we must obey him. Why don't you fly four more missions and see what happens?

    I don't want to.

    Suppose we let you pick your missions and fly milk runs? Major Major said. That way you can fly the four missions and not run any risks.

    I don't want to fly milk runs. I don't want to be in the war anymore.

    Would you like to see our country lose? Major Major asked.

    We won't lose. We've got more men, more money, and more material. There are ten million men in uniform who could replace me. Some people are getting killed and a lot more are making money and having fun. Let somebody else get killed.

    But suppose everybody on our side felt that way?

    Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn't I?

  • Joseph Heller Quote #10

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

  • Joseph Heller Quote #11

    Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #12

    Every writer I know has trouble writing.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #13

    Four times during the first six days they were assembled and briefed and then sent back. Once, they took off and were flying in formation when the control tower summoned them down. The more it rained, the worse they suffered. The worse they suffered, the more they prayed that it would continue raining. All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars. All through the day, they looked at the bomb line on the big, wobbling easel map of Italy that blew over in the wind and was dragged in under the awning of the intelligence tent every time the rain began. The bomb line was a scarlet band of narrow satin ribbon that delineated the forward most position of the Allied ground forces in every sector of the Italian mainland.

    For hours they stared relentlessly at the scarlet ribbon on the map and hated it because it would not move up high enough to encompass the city.

    When night fell, they congregated in the darkness with flashlights, continuing their macabre vigil at the bomb line in brooding entreaty as though hoping to move the ribbon up by the collective weight of their sullen prayers. I really can't believe it, Clevinger exclaimed to Yossarian in a voice rising and falling in protest and wonder. It's a complete reversion to primitive superstition. They're confusing cause and effect. It makes as much sense as knocking on wood or crossing your fingers. They really believe that we wouldn't have to fly that mission tomorrow if someone would only tiptoe up to the map in the middle of the night and move the bomb line over Bologna. Can you imagine? You and I must be the only rational ones left.

    In the middle of the night Yossarian knocked on wood, crossed his fingers, and tiptoed out of his tent to move the bomb line up over Bologna.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #14

    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 Quote #15

    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 Quote #16

    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.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #17

    He was pinched perspinngly in the epistemological dilemma of the skeptic, unable to accept solutions to problems he was unwilling to dismiss as unsolvable. He was never without misery, and never without hope.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #18

    He woke up blinking with a slight pain in his head and opened his eyes upon a world boiling in chaos in which everything was in proper order.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #19

    His heart cracked, and he fell in love. He wondered if she would marry him.

    “Tu sei pazzo,” she told him with a pleasant laugh.

    “Why am I crazy?” he asked.

    “Perché non posso sposare.”

    “Why can’t you get married?”

    “Because I am not a virgin,” she answered.

    “What has that got to do with it?”

    “Who will marry me? No one wants a girl who is not a virgin.”

    “I will. I’ll marry you.”

    “Ma non posso sposarti.”

    “Why can’t you marry me?”

    “Perché sei pazzo.”

    “Why am I crazy?”

    “Perché vuoi sposarmi.”

    Yossarian wrinkled his forehead with quizzical amusement. “You won’t marry me because I’m crazy, and you say I’m crazy because I want to marry you? Is that right?”

    “Si.”

    “Tu sei pazz’!” he told her loudly.

    “Perché?” she shouted back at him indignantly, her unavoidable round breasts rising and falling in a saucy huff beneath the pink chemise as she sat up in bed indignantly. “Why am I crazy?”

    “Because you won’t marry me.”

    “Stupido!” she shouted back at him, and smacked him loudly and flamboyantly on the chest with the back of her hand. “Non posso sposarti! Non capisci? Non posso sposarti.”

    “Oh, sure, I understand. And why can’t you marry me?”

    “Perché sei pazzo!”

    “And why am I crazy?”

    “Perché vuoi sposarmi.”

    “Because I want to marry you. Carina, ti amo,” he explained, and he drew her gently back down to the pillow. “Ti amo molto.”

    “Tu sei pazzo,” she murmured in reply, flattered.

    “Perché?”

    “Because you say you love me. How can you love a girl who is not a virgin?”

    “Because I can’t marry you.”

    She bolted right up again in a threatening rage. “Why can’t you marry me?” she demanded, ready to clout him again if he gave an uncomplimentary reply. “Just because I am not a virgin?”

    “No, no, darling. Because you’re crazy.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #20

    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.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #21

    Homer begged and Rembrandt went bankrupt. Aristotle, who had money for books, his school, and his museum, could not have bought this painting of himself.
    Rembrandt could not afford a Rembrandt.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #22

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

  • Joseph Heller Quote #23

    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 Quote #24

    I want to keep my dreams, even bad ones, because without them, I might have nothing all night long.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #25

    It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #26

    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 Quote #27

    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 Quote #28

    Just pass the work I assign along to somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation of responsibility.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #29

    Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great. We are talking of only a painting.

  • Joseph Heller Quote #30

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

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