There was shish-kabob for lunch, huge, savory hunks of spitted meat sizzling like the devil over charcoal after marinating seventy-two hours in a secret mixture Milo had stolen from a crooked trader in the Levant,...

General Peckem even recommends that we send our men into combat in full-dress uniform so they’ll make a good impression on the enemy when they’re shot down”.

Every writer I know has trouble writing.

They were frisky, eager and exuberant, and they had all been friends in the States. They were plainly unthinkable. They were noisy, overconfident, empty-headed kids of twenty-one. They had gone to college and were engaged...

Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great. We are talking of only a painting.

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...

Politically, he was a humanitarian who did know right from left and was trapped uncomfortably between the two. He was constantly defending his Communist friends to his right-wing enemies and his right-wing friends to his...

There’s nothing mysterious about it, He’s not working at all. He’s playing. Or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless,...

He woke up blinking with a slight pain in his head and opened his eyes upon a world boiling in chaos in which everything was in proper order.

The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.

That goddam stunted, red-faced, big-cheeked, apple-cheeked, curlyheaded, midget assed, , google-eyed, undersized, grinning, buck-toothed rat!!” Yossarian sputtered.~ Catch-22

He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.

Because he needed a friend so desperately, he never found one.

The important thing is to keep them pledging,” he explained to his cohorts. “It doesn’t matter whether they mean it or not. That’s why they make little kids pledge allegiance even before they know what...

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.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr...

Being born with a sickly resemblance to Henry Fonda was the first of a long series of practical jokes of which destiny was to make Major Major the unhappy victim throughout his joyless life. Being...

There is no disappointment so numbing…as someone no better than you achieving more.

The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.

…He was irritable with Orr, who had found two crab apples somewhere and walked with them in his cheeks until Yossarian spied them there and made him take them out. Then Orr found two horse...

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...

Why are they going to disappear him?’I don’t know.’It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t even good grammar.

The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and that no good...

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?” “I do,” Dunbar told him. “Why?” Clevinger asked. “What else...

It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.

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...

I want to keep my dreams, even bad ones, because without them, I might have nothing all night long.

There, there.”They didn’t take it on the lam weirdly inside a cloud the way Clevinger had done. They didn’t explode into blood and clotted matter. They didn’t drown or get struck by lightning, mangled by...

Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.’That’s some catch, that Catch-22,’ he observed.’It’s the best there is,’ Doc Daneeka agreed.Yossarian saw it...

Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

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

One had to know Plato personally to appreciate the love he suppressed puritanically for the music, poetry, and drama he censured in his philosophy and censored in his model communities. They moved him too deeply.

Depreciating motels, junked automobiles, and quick-food joints grow like amber waves of grain.

There is no light. I don’t feel like starting my generator. I used to get a big kick out saving people’s lives. Now I wonder what the hell’s the point, since they all have to...

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...

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...

History did not demand Yossarian’s premature demise, justice could be satisfied without it, progress did not hinge upon it, victory did not depend on it. That men would die was a matter of necessity; WHICH...

Who’s they?” He wanted to know. “Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?””Every one of them,” Yossarian told him.”Every one of whom?””Every one of whom do you think?””I haven’t any idea.””Then how...

Gold was not sure of many things, but he was definite about one: for every successful person he knew, he could name at least two others of greater ability, better, and higher intelligence who, by...

Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he’s in his office.

Just pass the work I assign along to somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation of responsibility.

They couldn’t keep Death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady.

mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.

[Chief White Halfoat:] Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It’s a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger, kike, wop, or spic.

You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You’re dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!

I frequently feel I’m being taken advantage of merely because I’m asked to do the work I’m paid to do.

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...

All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars.

Oh well,” McWatt sang, “what the hell.