Joseph Heller Quotes

When I grow up I want to be a little boy.

He could never decide whether to furgle them or photograph them, for he had found it impossible to do both simultaneously.

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.

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.

Now THERE'S a hollow state to be in, isn't it — to believe in God and get no sign that He's there.

If the chance ever comes to you to fall in love, grab it, every time. You might always live to regret it, but you won't find anything to beat it, and you won't know if it will come to you once more.

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.

No one who ever wants praise will be satisfied with praise, the person who wants love cannot be satisfied with love. No want is ever fulfilled. And therefore I still don't know whether it is better to fear God and keep His commandments or to curse God and die.

Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. And Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action.

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

Anyone seeking public office was not worthy to hold it.

I'm not even sure we really had that much need for God as much as we did seem to have a need to believe in Him.

How ironic the difference between me and my young son Absalom, between his soliciting the soundest means of overtaking me and having my life, while I was cudgeling my brains for a way to spare his. "Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom," were my mawkish words to my commanders as their men trooped past me toward the positions they would take up in the field outside the wood of Ephraim for the battle in which he would die. "Beware that none touch the young man Absalom," I urged like a fool. No, not like a fool, but like a fond, doting father who will overlook and excuse everything in the child he loves best, and who breaks his heart. And in that singular disparity in our desires abides his lasting victory over me: I loved him and he did not love me.

The yellow moon turned orange and was soon red as the setting sun.

How dispiriting I find it, even after all my personal triumphs, that we must grow up and grow sad, that we must age, weaken, and in time go home to our long home in the ground, and that even golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust.