Joseph Heller

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

I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy

Just for once I'd like to see all these things sort of straightened out, with each person getting exactly what he deserves. It might give me some confidence in this universe.

But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.

In short, Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains, and everyone knew it except those who soon found it out.

You're an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I'm an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I'm in an ideal position to appreciate it.

Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.

Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did.

He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret

Why are they going to disappear him?' I don't know.' It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar.

The night was full of horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a ward full of nuts.

They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly. No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried. Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked. They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone." And what difference does that make?

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.

When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'

Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.

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.