Joseph Heller Quotes

"Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?"
"There is no heaven. There is no hell."
"There is no heaven? There is no hell?"
"That's all in your mind."

Didn't I once observe that there is nothing new under the sun?

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.

If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?

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.

The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him.

They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him.

Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.

I imagine that God Himself frequently wants to feel like a king. Why else would He create the world?

He [God] owes me an apology too- at the very least. I'm not saying I shouldn't have been punished for those sins I committed. I'm saying that the punishments he chose were inhuman. I wonder what favor I'd want. I think I may be afraid to ask for it. I'm afraid He won't grant it. I'm more afraid that He will. Wouldn't it be tragic to find out that He really has been here all this time?

Everybody is as unstable as water.

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

The end result of experiencing terror and injury is not an increase in compassion, but a tendency toward callousness.

The wise man dies no better or more wisely than the fool. In what way, then, is the wise man wise?

How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?