It takes very little to make us [women] happy, and more than is contained in heaven and earth to keep us that way.
Why, swore Yossarian at him approvingly, you evil-eyed, mechanicallyaptituded, disaffiliated son of a bitch, did you walk around with anything in your cheeks?
Maybe I am senile already and people are too kind to tell me. People are not kind and would tell me. (Maybe people have told me, and I'm too senile to remember).
Since he had nothing better to do well in, he did well in school.
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 of greater ability,better character, and higher intelligence who, by comparison, had failed.
When I grow up I want to be a little boy.
The Germans will be beaten in a few months. And Japan will be beaten a few months after that. If I were to give up my life now, it wouldn't be for my country. It would be for Cathcart and Korn. So I'm turning my bombsight in for the duration. From now on I'm thinking only of me.
My fish dream is a sex dream.
He felt awkward because she was going to murder him.
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat, a man who was at least as mature and intelligent as you were and who you had to pretend was not? What could you say to him?
Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office.
Oh well," McWatt sang, "what the hell.
To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.
I only raped her once, he explained. Yossarian was aghast. But you killed her, Aarfy! You killed her! Oh, I had to do that after I raped her, Aarfy replied in his most condescending manner.
There was no established procedure for evasive action. All you needed was fear, and Yossarian had plenty of that, more fear than Orr or Hungry Joe, more fear even than Dunbar, who had resigned himself submissively to the idea that he must die someday.
All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars.
Doc Daneeka was Yossarian's friend and would do just about nothing in his power to help him.
Oh, don't you worry about that, Yossarian comforted him with a toneless snicker as the engines of the jeeps and ambulance fractured the drowsy silence and the vehicles in the rear began driving away backward.
Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been demoted because he no longer gave a damn whether he missed or not. He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.
I'm not running away from my responsibilities. I'm running to them. There's nothing negative about running away to save my life.
Everywhere he looked was a nut, and it was all a sensible young gentleman like himself could do to maintain his perspective amid so much madness. And it was urgent that he did, for he knew his life was in peril.
Bless you, my boy. Have a horseshoe. Thank you, sir. What should I do with it? Throw it. Away? At that peg there. Then pick it up and throw it at this.
The night was filled with 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, like a victim through a prison full of thieves. What a welcome sight a leper must have been!
Moses has the Ten Commandments, it's true, but I've got much better lines - King David.
The Texan wanted everybody in the ward to be happy but Yossarian and Dunbar. He was really very sick.
Colonel Cathcart had courage and never hesitated to volunteer his men for any target available.
Yossarian was in love with the maid in the lime-colored panties because she seemed to be the only woman left he could make love to without falling in love with.
Appleby was a fair-haired boy from Iowa who believed in God, Motherhood and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any of them, and everybody who knew him liked him.
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.
What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural.
Just pass the work I assign along to somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation of responsibility.
He was never without misery, and never without hope.
All over the world, boys on every side of the bomb line were laying down their lives for what they had been told was their country, and no one seemed to mind, least of all the boys who were laying down their young lives.
I had the strongest trade association in the world backing me up.
You know, one good apple can spoil the rest, Colonel Korn concluded with conscious irony.
Sure there's a catch,' Doc Daneeka replied. ‘Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.' There.
It was love at first sight.
The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.
I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.
Everyone was always very friendly toward him, and no one was ever very nice; everyone spoke to him, and no one ever said anything.
You've got to have a God. Without God, you might turn to something really crazy, like witchcraft, or religion.
It was odd how many wrongs leaving money seemed to right.
Kraft was a skinny, harmless kid from Pennsylvania who wanted only to be liked, and was destined to be disappointed in even so humble and degrading an ambition. Instead, of being liked, he was dead, a bleeding cinder on the barbarous pile whom nobody had heard in those last precious moments while the plane with one wing plummeted.
Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.' There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.
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.
Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions then he is caught in Catch-22: if he flies he is crazy, and doesn't have to; but if he doesn't want to he must be sane and has to. That's some catch...
Can't you stop by my tent on your way to the hospital and punch one of them in the nose for me? he speculated aloud. I've got four of them, and they're going to crowd me out of my tent altogether. You know, something like that once happened to my whole tribe, Chief White Halfoat remarked.
Be thankful you're healthy. Be bitter you're not going to stay that way. Be glad you're even alive. Be furious you're going to die.
