418 Quotes by Joseph Heller

"When salesmen are doing well, there is pressure upon them to begin doing better, for fear they may start doing worse."

"Nobody is sure anymore who really runs the company (not even the people who are credited with running it), but the company does run."

"This makes my boredom worse. It’s a real problem to decide whether it’s more boring to do something boring than to pass along everything boring that comes in to somebody else and then have nothing to do at all."

"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."

"Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family."

"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."

"Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him."

"They couldn't keep Death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady."

"Normally it was not until the latter half of a course that Gold lost interest in his subject matter and starting disliking his students. This term it was happening at the outset."

"Gold had discovered, since starting to exercise strenuously several years before, that he was able to make love with greater vitality, stamina, and self-control than formerly, and with much less pleasure."