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July 3, 2004
"Clevinger knew everything about the war except why Yossarian
had to die while Corporal Snark was allowed to live, or why Corporal Snark had to die while Yossarian was allowed to live.
It was a vile and muddy war, and Yossarian could have lived without it - lived forever, perhaps. Only fraction
of his countrymen would give up their lives to win it, and it was not his ambition to be among them. To die or not to
die, that was the question, and Clevinger grew limp trying to answer it. 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 men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was
willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance. But that was war."
~Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
July 8, 2004
"You put so much stock in winning wars...The real trick lies
in losing wars, in knowing which wars can be lost. Italy has been losing wars for centuries, and just
see how splendidly we've done nonetheless. France wins wars and is in a continual state of crisis. Germany loses
and prospers. Look at our own recent history. Italy won a war in Ethiopia and promptly stumbled into serious trouble.
Victory gave us such insane delusions of grandeur that we helped start a world war we hadn't a chance of winning. But
now that we are losing again, everything has taken a turn for the better, and we will certainly come out on top again, if
we succeed in being defeated."
~Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
July 9, 2004
"Doubts of such kind gnawed at the chaplain's lean, suffering frame
insatiably. Was there a single true faith, or a life after death? How many angels could dance
on the head of a pin, and with what matters did God occupy himself in all the infinite aeons before the Creation?
Why was it necessary to put a protective seal on the brow of Cain if there were no other people to protect him from?
Did Adam and Eve produce daughters? These were the great, complex questions of ontology that tormented him.
Yet they never seemed nearly as crucial to him as the question of kindness and good manners. He was pinched perspiringly
in the epistemological dilemma of the skeptic, unable to accept solutions to problems he was unwilling to dismiss as
unsolvable. He was never without misery, and never without hope."
~Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
July 10, 2004
"It was even possible that none of what he thought had taken place,
really had taken place, that he was dealing with an aberration of memory rather than of perception, that he never
really had thought he had seen what he now thought he once did think he had seen, that his impression now that he
once had thought so was merely the illusion of an illusion, and that he was only now imagining that he had ever once
imagined seeing a naked man sitting in a tree at the cemetery."
~Joseph Heller (Catch-22) This was just too crazy
not to put in.
July 15, 2004
"What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night
even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many
children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy?
How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane?
How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men?
How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave
me cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls
to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths?
How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and
then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and and old violinist or sculptor
somewhere."
~Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
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