Joseph Heller Quotes

There was only one catch and that was catch 22

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.

It seems like topsy-turvyland to make reason serve the irrational. Yet that is just what it has always done, and ought always to do.

Logic plus logic equals the illogical. Do you know what I mean?

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

When somebody says that all statements are false, the obvious problem is that as an assertion it's self-defeating.

No sense makes sense.

The tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart

I look out the chair while eating my pillow. I open the wall, I walk with my ears. I have ten eyes to walk with and two fingers to look with. I put my head on the floor to sit down, I put my bottom on the ceiling. After eating the music box, I spread jam on the rug for a great dessert.

There is absolutely no common sense, it is common non-sense.

Mankind cannot get on without a certain amount of absurdity.

We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.

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.

The Red Queen shook her head. "You may call it 'nonsense' if you like," she said, "but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!

The reason why truth is so much stranger than fiction is that there is no requirement for it to be consistent.

It is to believed because it is absurd.

It is certain because it is impossible. -Certum est quia impossibile

Ok you guys, pair up in threes!

Why do I need I.D. to get I.D.? If I had I.D. I wouldn't need I.D.

In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.

Absurdities die of self-strangulation.

Love: the sickest of Irony’s sick jokes. The place where logic and order go to die.

Paradoxes are the only truths.

The great roe is a mythological beast with the head of a lion and the body of a lion, though not the same lion.

It is not only not right, it is not even wrong.