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
The smartest people in Washington are the political reporters. They write about their inferiors.
There are yawning gulfs into which large chunks of me have fallen. I do not always know where I am at present.
Everything passes. (That's what makes it endurable.)
If a man is going to leave one wife to marry another, it's better if he divorces the first before he marries the second.
In the long run, failure was the only thing that worked predictably. All else was accidental.
I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy
I never even realized I was Jewish until I was practically grown up. Or rather, I used to feel that everybody in the world was Jewish, which amounts to the same thing.
There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy ... There's a catch. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.
I want to keep my dreams, even bad ones, because without them, I might have nothing all night long.
Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it.
If Richard Nixon was second-rate, what in the world is third-rate?
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22. 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.
When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'
A man's head is his castle.