Quote

I'll tell you what justice is. Justice is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning

Joseph Heller

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Joseph Heller
Age: 76 †
Born: 1923
Born: May 1
Died: 1999
Died: December 10
Autobiographer
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Justice
Knives
Dark
Magazine
Underhanded
Word
Warning
Battleship
Tell
Floor
Sneaky
Night
Guts
Chin
Without
Knees
Chins
Magazines
Knee
Brought
Knife

More quotes by Joseph Heller

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The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.
Joseph Heller
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Where were you born? On a battlefield, [Yossarian] answered. No, no. In what state were you born? In a state of innocence.
Joseph Heller
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A man's head is his castle.
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I could not write about a subject sacred to me because I would be too flippant. Fortunately, there are no subjects sacred to me.
Joseph Heller
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Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.
Joseph Heller
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¨ Oh, I´m not complaining. I know there´s a war on. I know a lot of people are going to have to suffer for us to win it. But why must I be one of them?¨
Joseph Heller
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When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.
Joseph Heller
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Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?
Joseph Heller
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What do you do when it rains? The captain answered frankly. I get wet.
Joseph Heller
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In the long run, failure was the only thing that worked predictably. All else was accidental.
Joseph Heller
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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
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Every writer I know has trouble writing.
Joseph Heller
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You're an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I'm an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I'm in an ideal position to appreciate it.
Joseph Heller
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where are the snowdens of yesteryear?
Joseph Heller
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Hungry Joe collected lists of fatal diseases and arranged them in alphabetical order so that he could put his finger without delay on any one he wanted to worry about.
Joseph Heller
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The enemy, retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.
Joseph Heller
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From men motivated by moral certitude, history teaches, no lasting good ever comes.
Joseph Heller
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Only Hungry Joe had something better to do each time he finished his missions. He had screaming nightmares and won fist fights with Huple's cat.
Joseph Heller
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Hasn't it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of sexual impotence? Yes, sir, it has. Then why do you do it? To assuage my fears of sexual impotence.
Joseph Heller
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For war there is always enough. It's peace that's expensive.
Joseph Heller