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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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I don't understand the process of imagination-though I know that I am very much at its mercy.
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Well then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?
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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
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When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.
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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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The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.
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Nurse Duckett found Yossarian wonderful and was already trying to change him.
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And anything worth dying for
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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.
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Let's take a drive into the middle of nowhere with a packet of Marlboro lights and talk about our lives.
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...[A]nything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for.
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In the long run, failure was the only thing that worked predictably. All else was accidental.
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Erogenous zones are either everywhere or nowhere.
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When I grow up I want to be a little boy.
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Well, he died. You don't get any older than that.
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Every writer I know has trouble writing.
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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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Gold was not altogether certain what, anatomically, a gorge was, but he knew that his was rising.
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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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It's a wise person, I guess, who knows he's dumb, and an honest person who knows he's a liar. And it's a dumb person, I guess, whose convinced he's wise...-Bob Slocum
Joseph Heller