Frases de Joseph Heller

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“Orr é doido?
– Sem dúvida.
– Pode dá-lo por incapaz?
– Claro que posso. Mas primeiro tem de me pedir. Faz parte do regulamento.
– Então, porque não lhe pede?
– Porque é doido. Só um lunático continuaria a participar em missões de combate depois de escapar por uma unha negra tantas vezes. Com certeza que posso dá-lo combate não está realmente doido.

(…)

Havia apenas um ardil e era o Artigo 22, o qual especificava que a preocupação de um homem pela sua própria segurança perante perigos reais e imediatos constituía o resultado do funcionamento de uma mente racional.”

“Com Catch-22 percebi, com angústia, que não era capaz de escrever sequer uma página por dia. Eu me impus um esquema de catorze páginas por semana. Deu e não deu certo, porque eu acabava não gostando daquelas páginas. Agora sei que não escrevo facilmente (…) Eu costumo dizer a estudantes talentosos que paciência é o que eles mais precisam; e que escrever é um trabalho duro. Não se torna mais fácil para os que conseguem êxito no ramo.”

“Eu estava tão influenciado pelas imagens de heroísmo de Hollywood que fiquei desapontado por não haver ninguém atirando atrás de mim.”

“É preciso que o sujeito tenha bom senso para saber que não passa de um idiota; é preciso ser honesto para compreender que é mentiroso; é preciso ser idiota para se julgar possuidor de bom senso.”

“Há um animal abjeto a vicejar em algum lugar dentro de mim. Tento mantê-lo oculto, subjugado, enquanto ele tenta se libertar. Não sei o que é nem a quem deseja destruir. Talvez seja eu mesmo. E pode ser a mim que ele esteja querendo destruir.”

“as pessoas com mentes manifestavam por vezes tendência para se tornar espertas.”

“À semelhança das medalhas olímpicas e troféus de ténis, significavam apenas que o possuidor fizera algo sem vantagem para ninguém mais eficientemente que qualquer outra pessoa.”

“Vanity. What's wrong with vanity? It doesn't satisfy.”

“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?”

“There was no way of knowing anything, he knew, not even that there was no way of knowing anything.”

“When one is infatuated, faults are endearing that in others would be heinous.”

“If character is destiny, the good are damned.”

“It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.”

“All is vanity, you know, ALL in the long run is but vanity and vexation of spirit.”

“Yossarian — the very sight of the name made him shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, suspicious, fascist and Communist.”

“If the chance ever comes to you to fall in love, grab it, every time. You might always live to regret it, but you won't find anything to beat it, and you won't know if it will come to you once more.”

“He who steals my purse steals trash, but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.”

“I said it again as a German might. "Rabinovitz. Ich bin Lew Rabinowitz, LR, von Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York. Du Kennst?" And then I spoke Yiddish. "Und ich bin ein Yid. Farshtest?" And then in English. "I am a Jew. Understand?" And then in my fractured German. "Ich bin Jude. Verstehst?" Now they didn't know where to look, but they did not want to look at me. I've got blue eyes that can turn into slits of ice, Claire still tells me, and a pale, European skin that can turn red fast when I laugh hard or get mad, and I wasn't sure they believed me.”

“He [God] owes me an apology too- at the very least. I'm not saying I shouldn't have been punished for those sins I committed. I'm saying that the punishments he chose were inhuman. I wonder what favor I'd want. I think I may be afraid to ask for it. I'm afraid He won't grant it. I'm more afraid that He will. Wouldn't it be tragic to find out that He really has been here all this time?”

“Women don't suffer from penis envy. Men do.”

“Didn't I once observe that there is nothing new under the sun?”

“The end result of experiencing terror and injury is not an increase in compassion, but a tendency toward callousness.”

“There is wisdom in madness and strong probability of truth in all accusations, for people are complete and everybody is capable of everything”

“He could never decide whether to furgle them or photograph them, for he had found it impossible to do both simultaneously.”

“But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don't make the profit. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.”

“Outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.”

“The problem with the loneliness I suffer is that the company of others has never been a cure for it.”

“If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?”

“God is a murderer, imagine that. I told you I had the best story in the Bible, didn't I? I have always known that He was. Sooner or later He murders us all, doesn't He, and we go back to the dust from which we came. So I'm no longer scared to defy him. All He can do is kill me.”

“God does have this self-serving habit of putting all blame for His own mistakes on other people, doesn't He? He picks someone arbitrarily, unbidden, right out of the blue so to speak, and levies upon them tasks of monumental difficulty for which we don't always measure up in every particular, then charges US for HIS error in selecting imperfectly. He tends to forget that we are no more infallible than He is.”

“When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, "Who has?"”

“I imagine that God Himself frequently wants to feel like a king. Why else would He create the world?”

“"Let someone else get killed!" "Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?" "Well then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?"”

“The yellow moon turned orange and was soon red as the setting sun.”

“Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.”

“Climb, you bastard! Climb, climb, climb, climb!”