Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Look
Roots
Come
Couldn
Looks
Upon
Right
Everyone
Work
Difficult
Way
Death
Canal
Else
Canals
Seems
Root

More quotes by Joseph Heller

Image
I can't start writing until I have a closing line.
Joseph Heller
Image
Gold was not altogether certain what, anatomically, a gorge was, but he knew that his was rising.
Joseph Heller
Image
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
Image
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
Image
A man's head is his castle.
Joseph Heller
Image
He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
Joseph Heller
Image
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.
Joseph Heller
Image
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.
Joseph Heller
Image
How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements?
Joseph Heller
Image
If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?
Joseph Heller
Image
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
Image
I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service.
Joseph Heller
Image
What do you do when it rains? The captain answered frankly. I get wet.
Joseph Heller
Image
Under Colonel Korn's rule, the only people permitted to ask questions were those who never did.
Joseph Heller
Image
I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.
Joseph Heller
Image
In the long run, failure was the only thing that worked predictably. All else was accidental.
Joseph Heller
Image
The night was full of horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a ward full of nuts.
Joseph Heller
Image
He was sick with lust and mesmerized with regret
Joseph Heller
Image
If Richard Nixon was second-rate, what in the world is third-rate?
Joseph Heller
Image
When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.
Joseph Heller