Joseph Heller

That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance.

I don't want to make sacrifices. I want to make dough.

She reminded him of (...) all the shivering, stupefying misery in a world that never yet had provided enough heat and food and justice for all but an ingenious and unscrupulous handful. What a lousy earth!

The spirit gone, man is garbage.

So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?

No such private nights of ecstasy or hushed-up drinking and sex orgies ever occurred. They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him.

Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family.

It takes brains not to make money,_ Colonel Cargill wrote in one of the homiletic memoranda he regularly prepared for circulation over General Peckem__ signature. __ny fool can make money these days and most of them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for example, one poet who makes money.

Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousy chain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all.

My fish dream is a sex dream.

Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.

Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.

His heart cracked, and he fell in love. He wondered if she would marry him. __u sei pazzo,_ she told him with a pleasant laugh. __hy am I crazy?_ he asked. __erché non posso sposare._ __hy can__ you get married?_ __ecause I am not a virgin,_ she answered. __hat has that got to do with it?_ __ho will marry me? No one wants a girl who is not a virgin._ __ will. I__l marry you._ __a non posso sposarti._ __hy can__ you marry me?_ __erché sei pazzo._ __hy am I crazy?_ __erché vuoi sposarmi._ Yossarian wrinkled his forehead with quizzical amusement. __ou won__ marry me because I__ crazy, and you say I__ crazy because I want to marry you? Is that right?_ __i._ __u sei pazz_!_ he told her loudly. __erché?_ she shouted back at him indignantly, her unavoidable round breasts rising and falling in a saucy huff beneath the pink chemise as she sat up in bed indignantly. __hy am I crazy?_ __ecause you won__ marry me._ __tupido!_ she shouted back at him, and smacked him loudly and flamboyantly on the chest with the back of her hand. __on posso sposarti! Non capisci? Non posso sposarti._ __h, sure, I understand. And why can__ you marry me?_ __erché sei pazzo!_ __nd why am I crazy?_ __erché vuoi sposarmi._ __ecause I want to marry you. Carina, ti amo,_ he explained, and he drew her gently back down to the pillow. __i amo molto._ __u sei pazzo,_ she murmured in reply, flattered. __erché?_ __ecause you say you love me. How can you love a girl who is not a virgin?_ __ecause I can__ marry you._ She bolted right up again in a threatening rage. __hy can__ you marry me?_ she demanded, ready to clout him again if he gave an uncomplimentary reply. __ust because I am not a virgin?_ __o, no, darling. Because you__e crazy.

He found Luciana sitting alone at a table in the Allied officers' night club, where the drunken Anzac major who had brought her there had been stupid enough to desert her for the ribald company of some singing comrades at the bar."All right, I'll dance with you," she said, before Yossarian could even speak. "But I won't let you sleep with me.""Who asked you?" Yossarian asked her."You don't want to sleep with me?" she exclaimed with surprise."I don't want to dance with you.

Colonel Cathcart is our commanding officer and we must obey him. Why don't you fly four more missions and see what happens?""I don't want to.""Suppose we let you pick your missions and fly milk runs?" Major Major said. "That way you can fly the four missions and not run any risks.""I don't want to fly milk runs. I don't want to be in the war anymore.""Would you like to see our country lose?" Major Major asked."We won't lose. We've got more men, more money, and more material. There are ten million men in uniform who could replace me. Some people are getting killed and a lot more are making money and having fun. Let somebody else get killed.""But suppose everybody on our side felt that way?""Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn't I?

But Yossarian knew he was right, because, as he explained to Clevinger, to the best of his knowledge he had never been wrong.

The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish.

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