418 Quotes by Joseph Heller

"At the state university he took his studies so seriously that he was suspected by the homosexuals of being a Communist and suspected by the Communists of being a homosexual."

"It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character."

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

"She slept for eighteen hours, while Nately dashed about the apartment all the next morning shushing everybody in sight, and when she woke up she was deeply in love with him. In the last analysis, that was all it took to win her heart - a good night's sleep."

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."

"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"

"My fish dream is a sex dream."

"Each morning they came around, three brisk and serious men with efficient mouths and inefficient eyes..."

"There is no disappointment so numbing...as someone no better than you achieving more."

"And he knew something else as a social evolutionist that he might stress someday in his 'Every Change Is for the Worse' should he ever find time to write it: Gold knew that the most advanced and penultimate stage of a civilization was attained when chaos masqueraded as order, and he knew we were already there."