Heller Quotes & Sayings

They had not brains enough to be introverted and repressed. Cronies — Joseph Heller

It was true. Nothing was ever lost. And nothing was ever forgotten, no matter how painful. The city was like a heart that way. She had four chambers, too. She had arteries that led in and out. She kept things moving. She kept the oxygen flowing in and out, in and out, clean for dirty, dirty for clean, the filthy midnight whispers for the purest morning prayers — Jason Heller

When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. — Joseph Heller

Bless you, my boy. Have a horseshoe." "Thank you, sir. What should I do with it?" "Throw it." "Away?" "At that peg there. Then pick it up and throw it at this — Joseph Heller

Heller wrote Catch-22 in the evenings after work, sitting at the kitchen table in his Manhattan apartment. — Mason Currey

There were billions of conscientious body cells oxidating away day and night like dumb animals at their complicated job of keeping him alive and healthy, and every one was a potential traitor and foe. — Joseph Heller

There it was again - the perverse refusal to acknowledge my hostility. She seemed to me like some magical lake in a fairy tale: nothing could disturb the mirror-calm of her surface. My snide comments and bitter jokes disappeared soundlessly into her depths, leaving not so much as a ripple. — Zoe Heller

There are yawning gulfs into which large chunks of me have fallen. I do not always know where I am at present. — Joseph Heller

More often than not, the chances that are presented to us go unnoticed. Their lessons left unlearned. The most common occurrence is love. Many guard their hearts out of fear that they will be broken, but what is learned by denying one's self? Chance is a miracle. Not an act of God, but a genuinely inexpiable opportunity that can surpass the bonds of one's fate potentially altering the outcome. — A.C. Heller

Management is a far more homely business than its would be scientists suggest, more closely allied to cookery than any other human activity. Like cooking, it rests on a degree of organisation and on adequate resources. But just as no two chefs run their kitchens the same way, so no two managements are the same. — Robert Heller

In fact, though the books came slowly, he was a novelist to his bootlaces, an avid narrator who couldn't stop the story once it had started, who felt the terrors of existence so acutely that he had to tell them and tell them until he'd made them something else. — Joseph Heller

They were four clean-cut kids who were having lots of fun, and they were driving Yossarian nuts. He could not make them understand that he was a crotchety old fogey of twenty-eight, that he belonged to another generation, another era, another world, that having a good time bored him and was not worth the effort, and that they bored him, too. He could not make them shut up; they were worse than women. They had not brains enough to be introverted and repressed. — Joseph Heller

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. — Joseph Heller

If you can concentrate on listening to another person - without your own viewpoint getting in the way, without judging or discarding or thinking of a response - for the simple purpose of taking in someone else's reality, you start to understand her. — L. Alison Heller

Don't beg a man to keep you. If he isn't sure you are the right one make the decision for yourself. You deserve better than maybe. — Paula Heller Garland

The American people deserve long-term, forward-thinking policies. — Dean Heller

While photographs certainly attest to Nazi crimes, the magnitude of Nazi genocide demands that every trace of the regime be forever remembered. The various symbols devised by the Nazi image-makers for the most sophisticated visual identity of any nation are a vivid reminder of the systematic torture and murder engaged in by this totalitarian state. These pictures, signs, and emblems are not merely clip art for contemporary designers to toy with as they please, but evidence of crimes against humanity. — Steven Heller

If sophisticated calculations are needed to justify an action, don't do it. — Robert Heller

She was the epitome of stately sorrow each time she smiled. — Joseph Heller

The only end in sight was Yossarian's own, and he might have remained in the hospital until doomsday had it not been for that patriotic Texan with his infundibuliform jowls and his lumpy, rumpleheaded, indestructible smile cracked forever across the front of his face like the brim of a black ten-gallon hat. — Joseph Heller

What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for. — Joseph Heller

How you refill. Lying there. Something like happiness, just like water, pure and clear pouring in. So good you don't even welcome it, it runs through you in a bright stream, as if it has been there all along. — Peter Heller

When we are most scared is the time to summon our clearest concentration and move forward, not back. — Peter Heller

I used to think it was immoral to be unhappy. — Joseph Heller

One of the tricks that you have to learn, with episodic TV, is you don't know how many years you're going to be blessed with. — Bruno Heller

The only thing going on was a war, and no one seemed to notice but Yossarian and Dunbar. And when Yossarian tried to remind people, they drew away from him and thought he was crazy. — Joseph Heller

For something made of wires, bits, and bytes, technology can elicit some fairly strong emotions in the people who attempt to use it. — Martha Heller

If everybody was so reverent of the institute of marriage, how did all the adultery get committed? — Zoe Heller

This stuff is better than cotton candy, really it is. It's made out of real cotton. Yossarian, you've got to help me make the men eat it. Egyptian cotton is the finest cotton in the world. — Joseph Heller

Heller," he called after me. "I don't know what you have up your sleeve, but I suggest you not bother. Like Sun Tzu said: 'All battles are won or lost before they're fought. — Joseph Finder

She glimpsed the sexless mounds between their legs and shuddered. For some reason, she found their lack of genitals uncannily obscene, an indignity, a piece of humanity they had been denied. — Jason Heller

I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. "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. — Joseph Heller

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. — Joseph Heller

To pray for their safety was to pray for the death of other young men he did not even know. — Joseph Heller

It gives me vertigo to watch TV dramas. — Bruno Heller

Don't forget to pause and nourish yourself a bit along the way. When you're born to help others sometimes you forget to help yourself. — Paula Heller Garland

Italy is still very much the same place it was 2,000 years ago. Italians are still the same .. there's a sense of beauty and a sense of dignity and a sense of living life to the full that infects everyone. — Bruno Heller

Now you've given them hope, and they're unhappy. So the blame is all yours. — Joseph Heller

I am miracle ingredient Z-247. I'm immense. I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman. — Joseph Heller

I think the tone of mockery Heller finds is a part of Mann's irony, but only a part - a brilliant further touch consists in juxtaposing perspectives so that we're led to wonder whether the mockery itself is the last word. — Philip Kitcher

I frequently feel I'm being taken advantage of merely because I'm asked to do the work I'm paid to do. — Joseph Heller

The body stores the trauma of our lives in muscular rigidity, thereby keeping us stuck in the past. When we release the tension in the body and align ourselves with gravity, we take a new stand in life. This allows us to be at ease with ourselves and in harmony in our relationship to others and to our planet. — Joseph Heller

Glittering news chips in men's sideburns and women with braided microfilament glo-strands stepping around me, laughing with silver lipsticks. Kaleidoscope streets: lights and traffic and dust and coal diesel exhaust. Muddy and wet. — Jason Heller

What if you let go of your excuses? — Paula Heller Garland

It was truly a splendid structure, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his. There — Joseph Heller

Man was matter. Drop him out of a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. — Joseph Heller

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

I don't believe in miracles because it's been a long time since we've had any. — Joseph Heller

As each story for Cyber World popped up in my inbox, my confusion about how I defined cyberpunk grew. And I loved that feeling. Left to define the term "Cyber World" as they saw fit (or gloriously unfit), the authors formed a vast unconscious collective that redefined cyber-something-or-other for the current millennium. A network, you might even say. I don't say that flippantly. Cyberpunk - or should we just start saying "cyberfiction"? - must must continually plug back into itself, challenge itself, consume itself, and reinvent itself if it hopes to survive and remain relevant. — Jason Heller

I'd rather have peanut brittle crumbs on my face than flies in my eyes, Havermeyer retorted. — Joseph Heller

I have some decades to spare. Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away? — Joseph Heller

A nagging bitch of a doubt, burrowing painlessly inside a conscience that felt perfectly clear — Joseph Heller

I don't want to make sacrifices. I want to make dough. — Joseph Heller

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

He's alone, You're alone, that's more than enough to have in common. What else do you want? — Eva Heller

I've come to look upon death the same way I look upon root-canal work. Everyone else seems to get through it all right, so it couldn't be too difficult for me. — Joseph Heller

Captain Flume was obsessed with the idea that Chief White Halfoat would tiptoe up to his cot one night when he was sound asleep and slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Captain Flume had obtained this idea from Chief White Halfoat himself, who did tiptoe up to his cot one night as he was dozing off, to hiss portentously that one night when he, Captain Flume, was sound asleep he, Chief White Halfoat, was going to slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Captain Flume turned to ice, his eyes, flung open wide, staring directly up into Chief White Halfoat's, glinting drunkenly only inches away.
'Why?' Captain Flume managed to croak finally.
'Why not?' was Chief White Halfoat's answer. — Joseph Heller

His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbours sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap," he counselled one and all, and everyone said "Amen. — Joseph Heller

Maybe the most real thing the end. To realize when it's too late. — Peter Heller

If this was cynical, then we must allow that all courtship is cynical. — Zoe Heller

They're not going to send a crazy man out to be killed, are they?"
"Who else will go? — Joseph Heller

We wish you everything you wish yourself' Jurgen said.
'What do you wish yourself?' Birgit asked.
I felt silly 'I don't really have any specific wishes'
'a new old man perhaps?' Juliet said playfully
'but please, not just any old man!' I said.
'of course not just any old man! The man with whom it'll all be different. — Eva Heller

Surely there can't be so many countries worth dying for.'
Anything worth living for,' said Nately, 'is worth dying for.'
And anything worth dying for,' answered the sacrilegious old man, 'is certainly worth living for. — Joseph Heller

She also confessed that in an odd way she was happier here than she'd ever been. Even with all the loss. Happier being whatever that was. Than waiting. — Peter Heller

I did it to protect my good reputation in case anyone ever caught me walking around with crab apples in my cheeks. With rubber balls in my hands I could deny there were crab apples in my cheeks. Everytime someone asked me why I was walking around with crab apples in my cheeks, I'd just open my hands and show them it was rubber balls I was walking around with, not crab apples, and that they were in my hands, not my cheeks. It was a good story, but I never knew if it got across or not, since its pretty hard to make people understand you when your talking to them with two crab apples in your cheeks. — Joseph Heller

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 — Joseph Heller

When you're living in the moment, you're living in the moment; whatever that moment is, that's your reality. Everything else is a myth. — Steven Heller

Rise above principle and do what's right. — Joseph Heller

One of the things about working for an old school studio like Warner Bros. is that there is an institutional culture and institutional memory, in terms of production design, camera work, and directors who understand how to do this kind of thing. — Bruno Heller

It's early spring, some late or early hour with Orion toppling backward onto the serrated edge of the mountains and not crying out but silent, silent as he tries to shoot the bull before it tramples him. Sometimes he is very peaceful not tonight. Tonight he is fighting for his life. — Peter Heller

A lot of the challenge with TV, as opposed to making movies, is that you have to leave room for the characters in the story to tell themselves. Sometimes you don't know where a character is going to go and what's going to happen to them until you've seen the actor take that part and make it their own. — Bruno Heller

Open your heart to a baseball team and you're liable to get it broken. — Jane Heller

Waiting for supply-side economics to work is like leaving the landing lights on for Amelia Earhart. — Walter Heller

Most of us are never seen, not clearly, and when we are we likely jump and run. — Peter Heller

The Germans will be beaten in a few months. And Japan will be beaten a few months after that. If I were to give up my life now, it wouldn't be for my country. It would be for Cathcart and Korn. So I'm turning my bombsight in for the duration. From now on I'm thinking only of me. — Joseph Heller

Don't claim you're sincere, just be it. — Eva Heller

At this stage they were killers. I mean this stage in our mutually culpable history. Who — Peter Heller

Eazy, Dre, Cube. Conceptualizer, musicalizer, lyricizer. Father, son, and holy ghost. The trinity behind N.W.A. — Jerry Heller

never give testimony against another physician. — Joseph Heller

You have a morbid aversion to dying. You probably resent the fact that you're at war and might get your head blown off any second."
"I more than resent it, sir. I'm absolutely incensed."
"You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs, or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate."
"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously."
"You're antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated, or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if you're a manic-depressive!"
"Yes, sir. Perhaps I am."
"Don't try to deny it."
"I'm not denying it, sir," said Yossarian, pleased with the miraculous rapport that finally existed between them. "I agree with all you've said. — Joseph Heller

[A]nything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for. — Joseph Heller

I wonder what kind of person would come out if I ever did erase all my inhibitions at once, what kind of being is bottled up inside me now. — Joseph Heller

There are certain people in whom you can detect the seeds of madness - seeds that have remained dormant only because the people in question have lived relatively comfortable, middle class lives. They function perfectly well in the world, but you can imagine, given a nasty parent, or a prolonged bout of unemployment, how their potential for craziness might have been realized. — Zoe Heller

How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so. — Joseph Heller

Certainly,nothing proceeded according to desire.In the long run, failure was the only thing that worked predictably. All else was accidental. Good intentions had miscarried, and bad ones had not improved. — Joseph Heller

She must have been freezing, and it filled Pete with gratitude for the no-bullshit people of the earth, the people who knew what had to be done and would find their own damn coat later. — Peter Heller

Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts - and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society? — Joseph Heller

In the long run, failure was the only thing that worked predictably. All else was accidental. — Joseph Heller

'Diary of a Teenage Girl' was my first American movie. It was my first movie in an American accent. It's based on a graphic novel, which was written in 2002 by someone called Phoebe Gloeckner. It was turned into a play by Marielle Heller, who then wrote it as a screenplay for Sundance Labs. — Bel Powley

General Peckem even recommends that we send our men into combat in full-dress uniform so they'll make a good impression on the enemy when they're shot down. — Joseph Heller

Let's take a drive into the middle of nowhere with a packet of Marlboro lights and talk about our lives. — Joseph Heller

In Madison's formulation, the right to bear arms was not inherent but derivative, depending on service in the militia. The recent Supreme Court decision (Heller v. District of Columbia, 2008) that found the right to bear arms an inherent and nearly unlimited right is clearly at odds with Madison's original intentions.37 — Joseph J. Ellis

Life is tenacious if you give it one little bit of encouragement. — Peter Heller

He's like a child, but without a child's capacity for joy. — Eva Heller

Technology is like a fish. The longer it stays on the shelf, the less desirable it becomes — Andrew Heller

And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways," Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. "There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. — Joseph Heller

One of the things he wanted to start screaming about was the surgeon's knife that was almost certain to be waiting for him and everyone else who lived long enough to die. — Joseph Heller

No one survived on the streets without a protective mask. No one survived naked. You had to have a role. You had to be "thug," "playa," "athlete," "gangsta," or "dope man." Otherwise, there was only one role left to you: "victim. — Jerry Heller

The logo is an identifier but it's also something that stands-in for who you are. — Steven Heller

Vindication and horror. Sometimes being right isn't all it's cracked up to be: how — Peter Heller