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I can't start writing until I have a closing line.

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
Closing
Line
Lines
Start
Writing

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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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?¨
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When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as 'Catch-22' I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'
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Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.
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I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy
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History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind. Surely, Watt with his steam engine, Faraday with his electric motor, and Edison with his incandescent light bulb did not have it as their goal to contribute to a fuel shortage some day that would place their countries at the mercy of Arab oil.
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mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.
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I don't understand the process of imagination-though I know that I am very much at its mercy.
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It is the anonymous they, the enigmatic they who are in charge. Who is they? I don't know. Nobody knows. Not even they themselves.
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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.
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Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family.
Joseph Heller
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Well, he died. You don't get any older than that.
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I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service.
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A man's head is his castle.
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He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
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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
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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
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Everything passes. (That's what makes it endurable.)
Joseph Heller