Darkly Comical Quotes – Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller 5/1/1923 – 12/12/1999 served as a blacksmith’s apprentice, B-25 bombardier (60 combat missions), Fulbright scholar, Composition instructor, copywriter at an advertising agency (where he worded alongside Mary Higgins Clark), satirical novelist, television writer and playwright.

His favorite work, Catch 22, was listed number 7 on Modern Library’s list of the top 100 novels of the century.

Joseph Heller Quotes

He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.

Rise above principal and do what’s right.

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?

The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don’t you know history?

He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.

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

Open you eyes, Clevinger. It doesn’t make a dammed bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.

Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy.

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

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, 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. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.
“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.