Joseph Heller (1923 – 1999)
American novelist and playwright.
Vanity. What's wrong with vanity? It doesn't satisfy.
"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?"
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.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.
"Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."
No one lusting for blood is ever innocent. Or satisfied. I have not been innocent. Or satisfied. Just as the man who wants silver will not be satisfied with silver, a man who wants the blood of another will not be satisfied with having that blood, nor the woman with jewels be satisfied with jewels, and the man who wants women will not be satisfied with women. Don't try telling me different. Haven't I looked about me in the city and seen how all labor is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not filled? Don't I know myself that no want is ever satisfied? Wishes are granted, goals attained. But wants? Forget them. They live as long as the person they inhabit.
I do know that girls in their early twenties are easy and sweet. (Girls in their late twenties are easier but sad, and that isn't so sweet.) They are easy, I think, because they are sweet, and they are sweet, I think, because they are dumb.
"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."
"Climb, you bastard! Climb, climb, climb, climb! "
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.