Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller
Joseph Hellerwas an American satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. The title of one of his works, Catch-22, entered the English lexicon, to refer to a vicious circle, wherein an absurd, no-win, contradictory choice, particularly in situations in which the desired outcome of the choice is a bureaucratic, or legal impossibility for artificial reasons, and hence, then regardless of the chosen option, a paradoxically negative outcome is a certainty. Although he is remembered primarily for Catch-22, his other works...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 May 1923
CountryUnited States of America
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.
Hungry Joe collected lists of fatal diseases and arranged them in alphabetical order so that he could put his finger without delay on any one he wanted to worry about.
There was only one catch and that was Catch22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask, and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.
Remember that everyone deserves some fun during working hours.
Gold was not altogether certain what, anatomically, a gorge was, but he knew that his was rising.
I think in every country that there is at least one executive who is scared of going crazy.
Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.
I write longhand and I type and I rewrite on the typed pages.
I don't understand the process of imagination-though I know that I am very much at its mercy.
They can do anything we can't stop them from doing.
And anything worth dying for
You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.” --Colonel Korn, Catch-22
What would they do to me," he asked in confidential tones, "if I refused to fly them?" We'd probably shoot you," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied. We?" Yossarian cried in surprise. "What do you mean, we? Since when are you on their side?" If you're going to be shot, whose side do you expect me to be on?" ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen retorted
Catch-22 did not exist, he was positive of that, but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed, and that was much worse, for there was no object or text to ridicule or refute, to accuse, criticize, attack, amend, hate, revile, spit at, rip to shreds, trample upon or burn up.