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Catch-22

Catch-22 is a 1961 novel by Joseph Heller, an anti-war novel and a general critique of bureaucracy. The novel's title is from a catch, or snag, first described in the quote from chapter 5 below. The phrase "catch-22" almost immediately entered common usage for that kind of conundrum or sense-defeating logic.

 * Page-numbers refer to the 50th Anniversary Simon & Schuster edition.

Chapter 1

 * It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain, he fell madly in love with him.
 * p. 7, Opening Lines

 * Actually, the pain in his liver had gone away, but Yossarian didn't say anything and the doctors never suspected.
 * p. 7

 * After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. "They asked for volunteers. It's very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back." And he had not written anyone since.
 * p. 8

"You're right," Yossarian shouted back. "You're right, you're right, you're right. The hot dog, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mom's apple pie. That's what everyone's fighting for. But who's fighting for the decent folk? Who's fighting for more votes for the decent folk? There's no patriotism, that's what it is. And no matriotism, either." The warrant officer on Yossarian's left was unimpressed. "Who gives a shit?" he asked tiredly, and turned over on his side to go to sleep.
 * Then there was the educated Texan from Texas who looked like someone in Technicolor and felt, patriotically, that people of means—decent folks—should be given more votes than drifters, whores, criminals, degenerates, atheists and indecent folk—people without means. [...] Dunbar sat up like a shot. "That's it," he cried excitedly. "There was something missing — and now I know what it is." He banged his fist down into his palm. "No patriotism," he declared.
 * p. 9

 * The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him.
 * p. 10

"I heard you kill him," said Yossarian. "You killed him because he was a nigger," Dunbar said. "You fellas are crazy," the Texan cried. "They don't allow niggers in here. They got a special place for niggers." "The sergeant smuggled him in," Dunbar said. "The Communist sergeant," said Yossarian. "And you knew it."
 * "You murdered him," said Dunbar.
 * p. 9

 * The colonel dwelt in a vortex of specialists who were still specializing in trying to determine what was troubling him. They hurled lights in his eyes to see if he could see, rammed needles into nerves to hear if he could feel. There was a urologist for his urine, a lymphologist for his lymph, an endocrinologist for his endocrines, a psychologist for his psyche, a dermatologist for his derma; there was a pathologist for his pathos, and cystologist for his cysts, and a bald and pedantic cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard who had been shanghaied ruthlessly into the Medical Corps by a faulty anode in an I.B.M. machine and spent his session with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him. The colonel had really been investigated. There was not an organ of his body that had not been drugged and derogated, dusted and dredged, fingered and photographed, removed, plundered, and replaced.
 * p. 15

Chapter 2

 * Outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals. All over the world, boys on every side of the bomb line were laying down their lives for what they had been told was their country, and no one seemed to mind, least of all the boys who were laying down their young lives.
 * p. 16

"No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried. "Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked. "They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone." "And what difference does that make?"
 * "They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
 * p. 16

"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 do you know they aren't?" "Because …" Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration.
 * As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.
 * p. 17

"I hate that son of a bitch," Yossarian growled.
 * Appleby was as good at shooting crap as he was at playing Ping-Pong, and he was as good at playing Ping-Pong as he was at everything else. Everything Appleby did, he did well. Appleby was a fair-haired boy from Iowa who believed in God, Motherhood, and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any of them, and everybody who knew him liked him.
 * p. 18

"Crazy!" Clevinger interrupted, shrieking. "That's what you are! Crazy!"
 * As far back as Yossarian could recall, he explained to Clevinger with a patient smile, somebody was always hatching a plot to kill him. There were people who cared for him and people who didn't, and those who didn't hated him and were out to get him. They hated him because he was Assyrian. But they couldn't touch him, he told Clevinger, because he had a sound mind in a pure body and was as strong as an ox. They couldn't touch him because he was Tarzan, Mandrake, Flash Gordon. He was Bill Shakespeare. He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deirdre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees. He was miracle ingredient Z-247. He was—
 * p. 19

 * Gasping furiously for air, Clevinger enumerated Yossarian's symptoms: an unreasonable belief that everybody around him was crazy, a homicidal impulse to machine-gun strangers, retrospective falsification, an unfounded suspicion that people hated him and were conspiring to kill him.
 * p. 20

Chapter 3

"Because they've got a better shape than horse chestnuts," Orr answered. "I just told you that." "Why," swore Yossarian at him approvingly, "you evil-eyed, mechanically-aptituded, disaffiliated son of a bitch, did you walk around with anything in your cheeks?" "I didn't," Orr said, "walk around with anything in my cheeks. I walked around with crab apples in my cheeks. When I couldn't get crab apples, I walked around with horse chestnuts. In my cheeks."
 * "Why did you walk around with crab apples in your cheeks? Yossarian asked again. "That's what I asked."
 * p.23

 * General Peckem was a general with whom neatness definitely counted. He was a spry, suave and very precise general who knew the circumference of the equator and always wrote "enhanced" when he meant "increased." He was a prick, and no one knew this better than General Dreedle, who was incensed by General Peckem's recent directive requiring all tents in the Mediterranean theater of operations to be pitched along parallel lines with entrances facing back proudly toward the Washington Monument. To General Dreedle…it seemed like a lot of crap. Furthermore, it was none of General Peckem's goddamn business how the tents in General Dreedle's wing were pitched. There then followed a hectic jurisdictional dispute between these overlords that was decided in General Dreedle's favor by ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, mail clerk at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters. Wintergreen determined the outcome by throwing all communications from General Peckem into the wastebasket. He found them too prolix. General Dreedle's views, expressed in less pretentious literary style, pleased ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen and were sped along by him in zealous observance of regulations.
 * p.26

 * Colonel Cargill, General Peckem's troubleshooter, was a forceful, ruddy man. Before the war he had been an alert, hard-hitting, aggressive marketing executive. He was a very bad marketing executive. Colonel Cargill was so awful a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. Throughout the civilized world, from Battery Park to Fulton Street, he was known as a dependable man for a fast tax write-off. His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily. He had to start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning. A person misplaced, disorganized, miscalculated, overlooked everything and opened every loophole, and just when he thought he had it made, the government gave him a lake or a forest or an oilfield and spoiled everything. Even with such handicaps, Colonel Cargill could be relied on to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
 * p. 27

 * Doc Daneeka was Yossarian's friend and would do just about nothing in his power to help him.
 * p. 28

 * Havermeyer was the best damned bombardier they had, but he flew straight and level all the way from the I.P to the target, and even far beyond the target until he saw the falling bombs strike ground and explode in a darting spurt of abrupt orange that flashed beneath the swirling pall of smoke and pulverized debris geysering up wildly in huge, rolling waves of gray and black. Havermeyer held mortal men rigid in six planes as steady and still as sitting ducks while he followed the bombs all the way down through the Plexiglas nose with deep interest and gave the German gunners below all the time they needed to set their sights and take their aim and pull their triggers or lanyards or switches or whatever the hell they did pull when they wanted to kill people they didn't know.
 * p. 29

Chapter 4

 * All men reporting on sick call with temperatures above 102 were rushed to the hospital. All men reporting on sick call with temperatures below 102 had their gums and toes painted with gentian violet solution and were given a laxative to throw away into the bushes. All those reporting on sick call with temperatures of exactly 102 were asked to return in an hour to have their temperatures taken again.
 * p. 32

Yossarian knew what he meant. "That's not what I meant," Doc Daneeka said, as Yossarian began scratching his back. "I'm talking about co-operation. Favours. You do a favour for me, I'll do one for you. Get it?" "Do one for me," Yossarian requested. "Not a chance," Doc Daneeka answered.
 * "Sure, that's what I mean" Doc Daneeka said. "A little grease is what makes this world go round. One hand washes the other. Know what I mean? You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."
 * p. 33

"Why is Hitler?" "When is right?" "Where was that stooped and mealy-colored old man I used to call Poppa when the merry-go-round broke down?" "Ho-ho beriberi." and "Balls!" all rang out in rapid succession, and then there was Yossarian with the question that had no answer: "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"
 * "Who is Spain?"
 * p. 34

"Old?" asked Clevinger with surprise. "What are you talking about?" "Old." "I'm not old." "You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?" Dunbar was almost angry when he finished. "Well, maybe it is true," Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. '''"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 is there?"'''
 * "Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. "This long." He snapped his fingers. "A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man."
 * p. 39

Chapter 5

 * "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."
 * p. 44, Chief White Halfoat

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.'''
 * There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.'''
 * p. 46

Chapter 6
"Why?" Captain Flume managed to croak finally. "Why not?" was Chief White Halfoat's answer.
 * Captain Flume spent as much of each evening as he could working in his darkroom and then lay down on his cot with his fingers crossed and a rabbit's foot around his neck and tried with all his might to stay awake. He lived in mortal fear of Chief White Halfoat. Captain Flume was obsessed with the idea that Chief White Halfoat would tiptoe up to his cot one night when he was sound asleep and slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Captain Flume had obtained this idea from Chief White Halfoat himself, who did tiptoe up to his cot one night as he was dozing off, to hiss portentously that one night when he, Captain Flume, was sound asleep he, Chief White Halfoat, was going to slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Captain Flume turned to ice, his eyes, flung open wide, staring directly up into Chief White Halfoat's, glinting drunkenly only inches away.
 * p. 56

 * "Catch-22?" Yossarian was stunned. "What the hell has Catch-22 got to do with it?" "Catch-22," Doc Daneeka answered patiently, when Hungry Joe had flown Yossarian back to Pianosa, "says you've always got to do what our commanding officer tells you to." "But Twenty-seventh Air Force says I can go home with forty missions." "But they don't say you have to go home. And regulations do say you have to obey every order. That's the catch. Even if the colonel were disobeying a Twenty-seventh Air Force order by making you fly more missions, you'd still have to fly them, or you'd be guilty of disobeying an order of his. And then Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters would really jump on you."
 * p. 58

Chapter 7

 * McWatt was the craziest combat man of them all probably, because he was perfectly sane and still did not mind the war.
 * p. 60

Chapter 8

 * 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. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
 * p. 68

 * "I want someone to tell me", Lieutenant Scheisskopf beseeched to them all prayerfully."If any of it is my fault, I want to be told." "He wants someone to tell him," Clevinger said. "He wants everyone to keep still, idiot," Yossarian answered. "Didn't you hear him?" Clevinger argued. "I heard him," Yossarian replied."I heard him say very loudly and very distinctly that he wants every one of us to keep our mouths shut if we know what's good for us." "I won't punish you", Lieutenant Scheisskopf swore. "He says he won't punish me", said Clevinger. "He'll castrate you," said Yossarian. "I swear I won't punish you," said Lieutenant Scheisskopf."I'll be grateful to the man who tells me the truth." "He'll hate you", said Yossarian."To his dying day he'll hate you."
 * p. 69

 * Clevinger was a troublemaker and a wise guy. Lieutenant Scheisskopf knew that Clevinger might cause even more trouble if he wasn't watched. Yesterday it was the cadet officers; tomorrow it might be the world. Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times. Such men were dangerous, and even the new cadet officers whom Clevinger had helped into office were eager to give damning testimony against him. The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.
 * p. 71

 * The best squadron in each wing won a yellow pennant on a pole that was utterly worthless. The best squadron on the base won a red pennant on a longer pole that was worth even less, since the pole was heavier and was that much more of a nuisance to lug around all week until some other squadron won it the following Sunday. To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.
 * p. 72

"Yossarian, sir," Lieutenant Scheisskopf said. "Yes, Yossarian. That's right. Yossarian. Yossarian? Is that his name? Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian?" Lieutenant Scheisskopf had the facts at his finger tips. "It's Yossarian's name, sir," he explained. "Yes, I suppose it is. Didn't you whisper to Yossarian that we couldn't punish you?" "Oh, no, sir. I whispered to him that you couldn't find me guilty —" "I may be stupid," interrupted the colonel, "but the distinction escapes me. I guess I'm pretty stupid, because the distinction escapes me."
 * "Last night in the latrine. Didn't you whisper that we couldn't punish you to that other dirty son of a bitch we don't like? What's his name?"
 * p. 78

"Justice, sir — " "That's not what justice is," the colonel jeered, and began pounding the table again with his big fat hand. "That's what Karl Marx is. 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."
 * "Justice?" The Colonel was astounded. "What is justice?"
 * p. 80

"But I'm not Jewish," answered Clevinger. "It will make no difference," Yossarian promised, and Yossarian was right. "They're after everybody."
 * "You haven't got a chance, kid," he told him glumly. "They hate Jews."
 * p. 81

Chapter 9

 * Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. 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. 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.
 * p. 83
 * Based on quote from Shakespeare, Twelfth Night Act II, scene v: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.”

 * Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the country. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise.
 * p. 83

 * "English history!" roared the silver-maned senior Senator from his state indignantly. "What's the matter with American history? American history is as good as any history in the world!"
 * p. 85

Chapter 10

 * Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy.
 * p. 104

"It's for my friend Yossarian. He's sure he's going to be killed." "Yossarian? Who the hell is Yossarian? What the hell kind of a name is Yossarian, anyway? Isn't he the one who got drunk and started that fight with Colonel Korn at the officer's club the other night?" "That's right. He's Assyrian." "That crazy bastard." "He's not so crazy," Dunbar said. "He swears he's not going to fly to Bologna." "That's just what I mean," Dr. Stubbs answered. "That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left."
 * "Do you really want some more codeine?" Dr. Stubbs asked.
 * p. 110

Chapter 12

 * Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.
 * p. 123

 * "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 remember it, the longer you might live."
 * p. 124

 * Yossarian sidled up drunkenly to Colonel Korn at the officers' club one night to kid with him about the new Lepage gun that the Germans had moved in. "What Lepage gun?" Colonel Korn inquired with curiosity. "The new three-hundred-and-forty-four-millimeter Lepage glue gun," Yossarian answered. "It glues a whole formation of planes together in mid-air."
 * p. 124

Chapter 15

 * Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren, the inoffensive joint squadron operations officers, were both mild, soft-spoken men of less than middle height who enjoyed flying combat missions and begged nothing more of life and Colonel Cathcart than the opportunity to continue flying them. They had flown hundreds of combat missions and wanted to fly hundreds more. They assigned themselves to every one. Nothing so wonderful as war had ever happened to them before; and they were afraid it might never happen to them again.
 * p. 145

Chapter 17

 * There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died unnecessarily. People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater, more orderly job of it. They couldn't dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave. They had taught her manners. They couldn't keep death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady. People gave up the ghost with delicacy and taste inside the hospital. There was none of that crude, ugly ostentation about dying that was so common outside the hospital.
 * p. 165

 * "There just doesn't seem to be any logic to this system of rewards and punishment. Look what happened to me. If I had gotten syphilis or a dose of clap for my five minutes of passion on the beach instead of this damned mosquito bite, I could see some justice. But malaria? Malaria? Who can explain malaria as a consequence of fornication? [...] Just for once I'd like to see all these things sort of straightened out, with each person getting exactly what he deserves. It might give me some confidence in this universe."
 * p. 170

 * There were too many dangers for Yossarian to keep track of. There was Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, for example, and they were all out to kill him. There was Lieutenant Scheisskopf with his fanaticism for parades and there was the bloated colonel with his big fat mustache and his fanaticism for retribution, and they wanted to kill him, too. There was Appleby, Havermeyer, Black and Korn. There was Nurse Cramer and Nurse Duckett, who he was almost certain wanted him dead, and there was the Texan and the C.I.D. man, about whom he had no doubt. There were bartenders, bricklayers and bus conductors all over the world who wanted him dead, landlords and tenants, traitors and patriots, lynchers, leeches and lackeys, and they were all out to bump him off. [...] There were lymph glands that might do him in. There were kidneys, nerve sheaths and corpuscles. There were tumors of the brain. There was Hodgkin's disease, leukemia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. There were fertile red meadows of epithelial tissue to catch and coddle a cancer cell. There were diseases of the skin, diseases of the heart, blood and arteries. There were diseases of the head, diseases of the neck, diseases of the chest, diseases of the intestines, diseases of the crotch. There even were diseases of the feet. There were billions of conscientious body cells oxidating away day and night like dumb animals at their complicated job of keeping him alive and healthy, and every one was a potential traitor and foe.
 * p. 172

Chapter 18
"It's not my business to save lives," Doc Daneeka retorted sullenly. "What is your business?" "I don't know what my business is. All they ever told me was to uphold the ethics of my profession and never give testimony against another physician."
 * "I'm asking you to save my life."
 * p. 174

"Be bitter you're not going to stay that way" "Be glad you're even alive." "Be furious you're going to die."
 * "Be thankful you're healthy."
 * p. 178

 * "And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways," Yossarian continued. … "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, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, 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? Why in the world did He ever create pain?"
 * p. 179

 * But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.
 * p. 180

 * Of course you're dying. We're all dying. Where the devil else do you think you're heading?
 * p. 182

Chapter 21
Colonel Cathcart was not superstitious, but he did believe in omens, and he sat right back down behind his desk and made a cryptic notation on his memorandum pad to look into the whole suspicious business of the Yossarians right away. He wrote his reminder to himself in a heavy and decisive hand, amplifying it sharply with a series of coded punctuation marks and underlining the whole message twice, so that it read:
 * A moment ago there had been no Yossarians in his life; now they were multiplying like hobgoblins. He tried to make himself grow calm. Yossarian was not a common name; perhaps there were not really three Yossarians but only two Yossarians, or maybe even only one Yossarian — but that really made no difference! The colonel was still in grave peril. Intuition warned him that he was drawing close to some immense and inscrutable cosmic climax, and his broad, meaty, towering frame tingled from head to toe at the thought that Yossarian, whoever he would turn out to be, was destined to serve as his nemesis.
 * Yossarian! ! ! (?) !
 * The colonel sat back when he had finished and was extremely pleased with himself for the prompt action he had just taken to meet this sinister crisis. 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.

 * p. 210

 * All Colonel Cathcart knew about his house in the hills was that he had such a house and hated it. He was never so bored as when spending there the two or three days every other week necessary to sustain the illusion that his damp and drafty stone farmhouse in the hills was a golden palace of carnal delights. Officers’ clubs everywhere pulsated with blurred but knowing accounts of lavish, hushed-up drinking and sex orgies there and of secret, intimate nights of ecstasy with the most beautiful, the most tantalizing, the most readily aroused and most easily satisfied Italian courtesans, film actresses, models and countesses. 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 with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him.
 * p. 211

It was clear to everybody but Major Danby, who was still concentrating on his wrist watch and counting down the seconds aloud. "… four … three … two … one … time!" called out Major Danby, and raised his eyes triumphantly to discover that no one had been listening to him and that he would have to begin all over again. "Ooooh," he moaned in frustration. "What was that?" roared General Dreedle incredulously, and whirled around in a murderous rage upon Major Danby, who staggered back in terrified confusion and began to quail and perspire. "Who is this man?" "M-major Danby, sir," Colonel Cathcart stammered. "My group operations officer." "Take him out and shoot him," ordered General Dreedle.
 * "I run a fighting outfit," he told them sternly, when the room had grown absolutely quiet and the men on the benches were all cowering sheepishly, "and there'll be no more moaning in this group as long as I'm in command. Is that clear?"
 * p. 221

Chapter 22

 * 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.
 * p. 231

"No." Milo looked at Yossarian with profound emotion. "That's what I like about you," he exclaimed. "You're honest! You're the only one I know that I can really trust."
 * Milo turned to him with a faint glimmer of mischief. "I have a sure-fire plan of cheating the federal government out of six thousand dollars. We can make three thousand dollars apiece without any risk to either of us. Are you interested?"
 * p. 233

 * Milo was not only the Vice-Shah or Oran, as it turned out, but also the Caliph of Baghdad, the Imam of Damascus, and the Sheik of Araby. Milo was the corn god, the rain god and the rice god in backward regions where such crude gods were still worshipped by ignorant and superstitious people, and deep inside the jungles of Africa, he intimated with becoming modesty, large graven images of his mustached face could be found overlooking primitive stone altars red with human blood. Everywhere they touched he was acclaimed with honor, and it was one triumphal ovation after another for him in city after city.
 * p. 237

Chapter 23
"Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for." "And everything worth dying for," answered the sacrilegious old man, "is certainly worth living for."
 * "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."
 * p. 247

"Because it's better to die on one's feet than live on one's knees," Nately retorted with triumphant and lofty conviction. "I guess you've heard that saying before." "Yes, I certainly have," mused the treacherous old man, smiling again. "But I'm afraid you have it backward. It is better to live on one's feet than die on one's knees. That is the way the saying goes." "Are you sure?" Nately asked with sober confusion. "It seems to make more sense my way." "No, it makes more sense my way. Ask your friends."
 * "They are going to kill you if you don't watch out, and I can see now that you are not going to watch out. Why don't you use some sense and try to be more like me? You might live to be a hundred and seven, too."
 * p. 247

Chapter 24

 * This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him. He had contracted with the Germans to bomb Milo's own camp.… Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made.
 * p. 259

 * "In a democracy, the government is the people," Milo explained. "We're people, aren't we? So we might just as well keep the money and eliminate the middleman. Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry."
 * p. 259

Chapter 27
"It's my leg." "It certainly is not your leg!" Nurse Cramer retorted. "That leg belongs to the U.S. government. It's no different than a gear or a bedpan. The Army has invested a lot of money to make you an airplane pilot, and you've no right to disobey the doctor's orders."
 * "I suppose you just don't care if you lose your leg, do you?"
 * p. 291

"Yes, sir, it has." "Then why do you do it?" "To assuage my fears of sexual impotence."
 * "Hasn't it ever occurred to you that in your promiscuous pursuit of women you are merely trying to assuage your subconscious fears of sexual impotence?"
 * p. 298

 * "You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!"
 * p. 299

 * "You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate." "Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help, "I hate them consciously." "You're antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Slums depress you. Greed depresses you. Crime depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if you're a manic-depressive!" […] "Then you admit you're crazy, do you?"
 * p. 303

Chapter 29

 * "Well, don't let that trouble you," General Peckem continued with a careless flick of his wrist. "Just pass on the work I assign you to somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation and responsibility. Somewhere down near the lowest level of this coordinated organization I run are people who get the work done when it reaches them, and everything manages to run along smoothly without too much effort on my part. I suppose that's because I am a good executive. Nothing we do in this large department of ours is really very important, and there's never any rush. On the other hand, it is important that we let people know we do a great deal of it. Let me know if you find yourself shorthanded. I've already put in a requisition for two majors, four captains and sixteen lieutenants to give you a hand. While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it. Don't you agree?"
 * p. 320

Chapter 31
Doc Daneeka jerked his head up quickly with resentful distrust. "What's that?" "You're dead, sir," repeated the other. That's probably the reason you always feel so cold." "That's right, sir. You've probably been dead all this time and we just didn't detect it."
 * "You're dead, sir," one of his two enlisted men explained.
 * p. 341

 * Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action.
 * p. 344

Chapter 34

 * The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.
 * p. 363

 * "It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?"
 * p. 367

Chapter 35

 * He proved as good as his word when a rawboned major from Minnesota curled his lip in rebellious disavowal and demanded his share of the syndicate Milo kept saying everybody owned. Milo met the challenge by writing the words "A Share" on the nearest scrap of paper and handing it away with a virtuous disdain that won the envy and admiration of almost everyone who knew him.
 * p. 369

Chapter 36

 * And looking very superior, he tossed down on the table a photostatic copy of a piece of V mail in which everything but the salutation "Dear Mary" had been blocked out and on which the censoring officer had written, "I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army."
 * p. 381
 * In older and overseas versions, the character's original name was Robert Oliver "R.O." Shipman, which was later changed to Albert Taylor Tappman.

Chapter 39

 * 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.
 * p. 405

“What the hell are you talking about?” Yossarian shouted at her in bewildered, furious protest. “How did you know it was Catch-22? Who the hell told you it was Catch-22?” “The soldiers with the hard white hats and clubs. The girls were crying. ‘Did we do anything wrong?’ they said. The men said no and pushed them away out the door with the ends of their clubs. ‘Then why are you chasing us out?’ the girls said. ‘Catch-22,’ the men said. ‘What right do you have?’ the girls said. ‘Catch-22,’ the men said. All they kept saying was ‘Catch-22, Catch-22.’ What does it mean, Catch-22? What is Catch-22?” “Didn’t they show it to you?” Yossarian demanded, stamping about in anger and distress. “Didn’t you even make them read it?” '''“They don’t have to show us Catch-22,” the old woman answered. “The law says they don’t have to.” “What law says they don’t have to?” “Catch-22.”'''
 * “Catch-22,” the old woman repeated, rocking her head up and down. “Catch-22. Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.”
 * p. 407

Chapter 40

 * "The men were perfectly content to fly as many missions as we asked them as long as they thought they had no alternative. Now you've given them hope, and they're unhappy. So the blame is all yours."
 * p. 421

Chapter 41
"There, there," Yossarian said, because he did not know what else to say. "There, there."
 * "I'm cold," Snowden said again in a frail, childlike voice. "I'm cold."
 * p. 437

 * He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.
 * p. 440

Chapter 42

 * "When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven, or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and human tragedy."
 * p. 445

Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: "But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way." "Then," said Yossarian, "I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?"'''
 * '''"From now on I'm thinking only of me."
 * p. 446

 * The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.
 * p. 453. Last lines.

title: Catch-22


text:
Anna and the King

Anna and the King is a 1999 film that recounts the story of the romance between the King of Siam (now Thailand) and widowed British schoolteacher, Anna Leonowens, during the 1860s
 * Directed by Andy Tennant. Written by Steve Meerson and Peter Krikes, based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon.

Prince Chulalongkorn

 * She was the first English woman I had ever met. And it seemed to me she knew more about the world than anyone. But it was a world Siam was afraid would consume them. The monsoon winds had whispered her arrival like a coming storm. Some welcomed the rain, but others feared a raging flood. Still she came, unaware of the suspicion that preceded her. But it wasn't until years later, that I began to appreciate how brave she was, and how alone she must have felt. An English woman. The first I had ever met.
 * I was only a boy, but the image of my father holding the woman he loved for the last time has remained with me throughout the years.
 * It is always surprising how small a part of life is taken up by meaningful moments. Most often they are over before they start, although they cast a light on the future and make the person who originated them unforgettable. Anna had shined such a light on Siam.

Anna Leonowens

 * In my letter confirming my employment, Your Majesty, you claimed you wanted Siam to take its place among the nations of the modern world. You spoke of building something greater than yourself. A country where no man is above the law. Which is why I chose to come here.
 * [to King Mongkut] Life is... precious, especially if you're a Christian and only allowed to have one.
 * Most people do not see the world as it is. They see it as they are.
 * Everyone should have legends. It allows us to dream.

King Mongkut

 * [to Anna] When a woman who has much to say says nothing, her silence can be deafening.

Dialogue

 * King Mongkut: You are teacher?
 * Anna Leonowens: Yes, Your Majesty, I am.
 * King Mongkut: You do not look sufficient of age for scientific teaching. How many years have you?
 * Anna Leonowens: Enough to know that age and wisdom do not necessarily go hand in hand, Your Majesty.

 * King Mongkut: I have never danced with a English woman before.
 * Anna Leonowens: Nor I with a king.

 * Beebe: How was the King compared to the other Englishmen?
 * Anna Leonowens: He was charming, very charming. I don't think I will ever forget, how he held his hand out to me, like I was...
 * Beebe: One of his 26 wives?
 * Anna Leonowens [A bit distraught]: Thank you Beebe, I never thought of it in that way.
 * Beebe [Knowingly]: Perhaps you should.

 * Anna Leonowens: My mind has taken me down many roads of late. All of which lead absolutely nowhere. What would Buddha say of that?
 * King Mongkut: That roads are for journeys, ma'am, not destinations.

 * Prince Chulalongkorn: Son of teacher forgets that I am son of King.
 * Louis Leonowens: Son of teacher couldn't care less.
 * Anna Leonowens: Louis, remember what I told you.
 * Louis Leonowens: I'm sorry Mother, but he started it.
 * Prince Chulalongkorn: In my country, man never tell a woman he is sorry. If you had father, you would know this.
 * Louis Leonowens: You don't have a father, you have a map.
 * [Louis pushes the prince.]
 * Anna Leonowens: Louis!
 * Prince Chulalongkorn: It is forbidden to touch royalty.
 * Louis Leonowens: I didn't touch you — I shoved you. Why don't you get one of your servants to shove me back?

 * Louis: Moonshee, why does the king have so many wives?
 * Moonshee: That is an excellent question — For your mother.

 * Anna Leonowens: Lord Bradley, may I have a moment?
 * Lord Bradley: I'm afraid a moment is all we have.
 * Lady Bradley: We're leaving on the next boat, and so should you.
 * Anna Leonowens: My place is here.
 * Lord Bradley: Your question?
 * Anna Leonowens: Are the British behind these Burmese attacks?
 * Mr. Kincaid: Stick to teaching, Ms. Leonowens. It's clear that you know nothing of pollitics.
 * Anna Leonowens: I know that Burma would never make a move without England's blessing.
 * Lord Bradley: Precisely. But, if our economy was threatened, then it would be our duty to protect our interests.
 * Anna Leonowens: Our economy?! Our interests?!
 * Lady Bradley: The ways of England are the ways of the world, my dear.
 * Anna Leonowens: Yes, a world that I am ashamed to call my own!
 * Lord Bradley: You forget yourself madam. Now if you will excuse us.
 * [They turn to leave]
 * Anna Leonowens: No, I will not. You toasted him! You praised him for his learning! And all the while you were planning to take the throne from him!
 * Lord Bradley: Well, you should do well to remember your own self, next time you are cheek to cheek with the king!

 * King Mongkut: If Alak crosses the bridge, everything I love will die.
 * Anna Leonowens: But they are only children!
 * King Mongkut: Yes, and heirs to the royal throne.
 * Anna Leonowens: What will you do?
 * King Mongkut: We will blow up the bridge.
 * Anna Leonowens: Will that work?
 * King Mongkut: It will, if he is on it.
 * Anna Leonowens: Your Majesty, promise me, promise me I will see you again!
 * [King turns and looks at Anna]
 * King Mongkut: If your Bible is correct, then the world was created in seven days. Who is to say that four men can not stop an army?
 * [The King puts his hand on Anna's cheek hesitantly, then walks away.]

 * Anna Leonowens: You have the power to lead your people...
 * King Mongkut: Now is not the time to change the way that things are done!
 * Anna Leonowens: Well, if not now, then when? How many more people must die so that you might save face?

 * King Mongkut [Coming back alive]: Why did you not take everyone to the monastery like king ordered!?
 * Anna Leonowens: Because I already lost one man to the jungle, your majesty... I wasn't about to let it happen again.

 * King Mongkut: Why did you come back?
 * Anna Leonowens: Because I could not imagine a Siam without you.

 * Anna Leonowens: [Gazing at the King on a balcony] What?
 * King Mongkut: Am wondering, giving circumstances, if it is proper for king to ask Anna to dance.
 * Anna Leonowens: I have danced with a king before, Your Majesty.
 * King Mongkut: And I with an English woman.
 * [They start to dance, and he pulls her close]
 * King Mongkut: Until now, Madame Leonowens, I did not understand supposition, man can be satisfied with only one woman.
 * [He kisses her hand, and they dance closer.]

Cast

 * Jodie Foster - Anna Leonowens
 * Chow Yun-Fat - King Mongkut
 * Bai Ling - Tuptim
 * Tom Felton - Louis T. Leonowens
 * Randall Duk Kim - General Alak
 * Kay Siu Lim - Prince Chaofa, King Mongkut's Brother
 * Melissa Campbell - Princess Fa-Ying
 * Deanna Yusoff - Queen Thiang
 * Geoffrey Palmer - Lord John Bradley
 * Ann Firbank - Lady Bradley
 * Bill Stewart - Mycroft Kincaid, East India Trading Co.
 * Sean Ghazi - Khun Phra Balat
 * Syed Alwi - The Kralahome, Prime Minister
 * Ramli Hassan - King Chulalongkorn
 * Keith Chin - Prince Chulalongkorn
 * Alif Silpachai - Chulalongkorn's brother
 * Kenneth Tsang - Justice Phya Phrom
 * Shantini Venugopal - the nanny
 * Goh Yi Wai - Mongkut's daughter
 * Harith Iskander - Nikorn

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Anna and the King


text:
User:Mike~enwikiquote

About Me
My name is Mike and I am 21 years old. I was born and live in the New York City area. I am a college student.

Interests
(Coming Soon)

title: User:Mike~enwikiquote


text:
Burton Rascoe

Arthur Burton Rascoe (22 October 1892 – 19 March 1957) was an American journalist, editor and literary critic. His most famous work, Titans of Literature, appeared in 1932.

Quotes

 * When H. L. Mencken unpacks his idiomatic brasses, tunes up his verbal strings, and gets in readiness his phrasal wood winds to orchestrate a fugue in damnation or in praise of man, god or book, his all too meagre audience cancels all other engagements to be on hand at the initial presentation. The result, that audience knows, will be an experience of pure enjoyment. His musicianship is unfailing. His program is unsatisfactory only in its impermanence. Though the theme he proposes is invariably Mencken — Mencken apropos of this or that — he gives it infinite and intricate variations.
 * "Fanfare", in H. L. Mencken (1920)

 * American literature has been, and is, singularly deficient in established critics who have anything like a rational conception of their jobs. The majority, initiate in a few of the patent rituals of Aristotle and Quintilian, don the forbidding robes of high priests to Sweetness and Light, and go about their business much as if the idea were to keep all they know to themselves.
 * "Fanfare", in H. L. Mencken (1920)

 * I felt exactly like the man in the advertisement who has not devoted fifteen minutes a day to the study of the classics. If only (I thought) I had devoted fifteen minutes a day to the cultivation of the aesthetic attitude! I could bound Afghanistan.
 * "Contemporary Reminiscences" in Arts & Decoration, Vol. 26 (1927), p. 50

 * It is true, of course, that like the fruit of the tree of life, Mr. Cabell's artistic progeny sprang from a first conceptual germ — "In the beginning was the Word." That animating idea is the assumption that if life may be said to have an aim it must be an aim to terminate in success and splendor. It postulates the high, fine importance of excess, the choice or discovery of an overwhelming impulse in life and a conscientious dedication to its fullest realization. It is the quality and intensity of the dream only which raises men above the biological norm; and it is fidelity to the dream which differentiates the exceptional figure, the man of heroic stature, from the muddling, aimless mediocrities about him. What the dream is, matters not at all — it may be a dream of sainthood, kingship, love, art, asceticism or sensual pleasure — so long as it is fully expressed with all the resources of self. It is this sort of completion which Mr. Cabell has elected to depict in all his work: the complete sensualist in Demetrios, the complete phrase-maker in Felix Kennaston, the complete poet in Marlowe, the complete lover in Perion. In each he has shown that this complete self-expression is achieved at the expense of all other possible selves, and that herein lies the tragedy of the ideal. Perfection is a costly flower and is cultured only by an uncompromising, strict husbandry.
 * Introduction to Chivalry (1921) by James Branch Cabell, later published in Prometheans : Ancient and Modern (1933), p. 279

 * Once we understand the fundamentals of Mr. Cabell's artistic aims, it is not easy to escape the fact that in Figures of Earth he undertook the staggering and almost unsuspected task of rewriting humanity's sacred books, just as in Jurgen he gave us a stupendous analogue of the ceaseless quest for beauty. For we must accept the truth that Mr. Cabell is not a novelist at all in the common acceptance of the term, but a historian of the human soul. His books are neither documentary nor representational; his characters are symbols of human desires and motives. By the not at all simple process of recording faithfully the projections of his rich and varied imagination, he has written thirteen books, which he accurately terms biography, wherein is the bitter-sweet truth about human life.
 * Introduction to Chivalry (1921) by James Branch Cabell, later published in Prometheans : Ancient and Modern (1933), p. 279

 * A news sense is really a sense of what is important, what is vital, what has color and life — what people are interested in. That's journalism.
 * As quoted in Useful Quotations : A Cyclopedia of Quotations (1933) edited by Tryon Edwards, C. N. Catrevas, and Jonathan Edwards

 * What no wife of a writer can ever understand, no matter if she lives with him for twenty years, is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window.
 * Quoted by Bennett Cerf in Shake Well Before Using (1948)

 * I am so constituted that I had rather read bad stuff than nothing.
 * As quoted in the dedication to The Pumpkin Coach (1935) by Louis Paul

title: Burton Rascoe


text:
Judith Martin

Judith Martin (September 13, 1938 - ) American advice columnist'' (under the pseudonym "Miss Manners")

Quotes

 * If you can’t be kind, at least be vague.”
 * September 1997

 * Civilized life begins with a boiled egg sitting upright in an egg cup.
 * Miss Manners column "Egg On Their Face", June 19, 2005

 * Dear Miss Manners: What about Easter? I suppose you have etiquette rules that apply to Easter Day? Gentle Reader: Certainly, and when the Day of Judgment comes, Miss Manners will have etiquette rules to apply to that, as well.
 * Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

 * Dear Miss Manners: What should I say when I am introduced to a homosexual "couple?" Gentle Reader: "How do you do?" "How do you do?"
 * Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

 * Dear Miss Manners: What is the proper way to eat potato chips? Gentle Reader: With a knife and fork. A fruit knife and an oyster fork, to be specific. Good heavens, what is the world coming to? Miss Manners does not mind explaining the finer points of gracious living, but she feels that anyone without the sense to pick up a potato chip and stuff it in their face should probably not be running around loose on the streets.
 * Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

 * Miss Manners doubts that there is anything in the world like an elegantly dressed Bostonian lurching across the room and diving face first into a bowl of guacamole dip while simultaneously disengaging her bodice from her bosom. Therefore, Miss Manners has a wee bit of trouble preparing a general rule for dealing with this eventuality.
 * Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

 * If you put together all the ingredients that naturally attract children - sex, violence, revenge, spectacle and vigorous noise - what you have is grand opera.
 * Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

 * Traditionally, a luncheon is a lunch that takes an eon.
 * Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

 * In a fit of exasperation, Miss Manners once demanded of a six-year-old person how it could be so childish and was forced to admit the justice of its reply, “I'm a child."
 * Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

 * Machines do not have feelings... This is not to say that no inanimate objects have feelings -- toys are loaded with feelings, for instance, and only a monster would break the heart of a rag doll.
 * "Park your car, not your manners," March 29, 1981

title: Judith Martin


text:
Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller (1 May 1923 – 12 December 1999) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is the 1961 novel Catch-22, a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for an absurd or contradictory choice.
 * See also: Catch-22

Quotes

 * When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, "Who has?"
 * As quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Quotations (1997) edited by Peter Kemp, p. 303

 * The only wisdom I think I've attained is the wisdom to be skeptical of other people's ideology and other people's arguments. I tend to be a skeptic, I don't like dogmatic approaches by anybody. I don't like intolerance and a dogmatic person is intolerant of other people. It's one of the reasons I keep a distance from all religious beliefs. I think in this country and in Australia too there's a late intolerance in most religions, an intolerance, a part that could easily become persecutions. We have some ultra-orthodox Jewish sects here in New York and I fear them as much as I would fear a Nazi organisation.
 * In an interview for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "Joseph Heller - Closing Time" (1998) by Ramona Koval

 * Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts — and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?
 * As quoted in "Heller's legacy will be 'Catch-22' ideas" at CNN (13 December 1999)

Catch-22 (1961)

 * It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.
 * Opening Lines

 * The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him.

 * 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 was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. 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.

 * "Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."

 * Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy.

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

 * He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.

 * “From now on I'm thinking only of me.” Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: “But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way?”  “Then,” said Yossarian, “I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?”

 * "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?"

 * 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.
 * Based on quote from Shakespeare, Twelfth Night Act II, scene v: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.”

 * The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with.

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

 * "Climb, you bastard! Climb, climb, climb, climb! "

 * 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.

 * "They might have occurred if either General Dreedle or General Peckem had once evinced an interest in taking part in orgies with him, but neither ever did, and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him."

 * "You know, that might be the answer — to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail."

 * "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."

 * This time Milo had gone too far. Bombing his own men and planes was more than even the most phlegmatic observer could stomach, and it looked like the end for him...Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made.

 * "Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. And Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action."

 * "Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. "This long." He snapped his fingers. "A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man." "Old?" asked Clevinger with surprise. "What are you talking about?" "Old." "I'm not old." "You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?" Dunbar was almost angry when he finished. "Well, maybe it is true," Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. "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 is there?"

 * "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?"

 * The God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.

 * "Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably.... It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all."

 * 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.

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

 * He could never decide whether to furgle them or photograph them, for he had found it impossible to do both simultaneously.
 * pp.53-54. Dell 1962 edition. (First use of "furgle" in the United States.)
 * "The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character."

Closing Time (1994)

 * The yellow moon turned orange and was soon red as the setting sun.
 * pp. 462
 * 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.
 * pp. 122
 * There was no way of knowing anything, he knew, not even that there was no way of knowing anything.
 * pp. 266

Something Happened (1974)

 * I get the willies when I see closed doors. Even at work, where I am doing so well now, the sight of a closed door is sometimes enough to make me dread that something horrible is happening behind it, something that is going to affect me adversely; if I am tired and dejected from a night of lies or booze or sex or just nerves and insomnia, I can almost smell the disaster mounting invisibly and flooding out toward me through the frosted glass panes. My hands may perspire, and my voice may come out strange. I wonder why.  Something must have happened to me sometime.
 * Opening Lines

 * I do know that girls in their early twenties are easy and sweet. (Girls in their late twenties are easier but sad, and that isn't so sweet.) They are easy, I think, because they are sweet, and they are sweet, I think, because they are dumb.

 * The years are too short, the days are too long.

 * When I grow up I want to be a little boy.

 * In my middle years, I have exchanged the position of the fetus for the position of a corpse.

 * Women my wife's age with broken marriages take up robustly with fellows much younger than themselves, sometimes boys, and their husbands don't like that part of it at all. (It's a means they have of really sticking it to us. The husbands can do without the money and kids. But they can't abide their wives' humping a younger dick and letting everyone know.)

 * Women don't suffer from penis envy. Men do.

Good as Gold (1979)

 * Forever goes quick.

 * Gold was opposed to segregation and equally opposed to integration. Certainly he did not believe that women or homosexuals should suffer persecution or discrimination. On the other hand, he was privately opposed to all equal rights amendments, for he certainly did not want members of either group associating with him on levels of equality or familiarity.

God Knows (1984)

 * Simon & Schuster, 1997, ISBN 0-684-84125-8

 * Whether God is dead or not hardly matters, for we would use him no differently anyway.

 * The promises of maniacs, like those of women, are not safely relied upon.

 * I hate God and I hate life. And the closer I come to death, the more I hate life.

 * I think I may have been the first grown man in the world to fall truly, passionately, sexually, romantically and sentimentally in love. I practically invented it.

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

 * Love is potent stuff, isn't it?

 * 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.

 * The wise man dies no better or more wisely than the fool. In what way, then, is the wise man wise?

 * 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?

 * 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 one is infatuated, faults are endearing that in others would be heinous.

 * I am arrogant enough to wish I were modest as he and modest enough to know that this is arrogance.

 * "Is he in heaven? Is he in hell?" "There is no heaven. There is no hell." "There is no heaven? There is no hell?" "That's all in your mind."

 * If character is destiny, the good are damned.

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

 * Nothing fails like success.

 * How dispiriting I find it, even after all my personal triumphs, that we must grow up and grow sad, that we must age, weaken, and in time go home to our long home in the ground, and that even golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust.

 * No one who ever wants praise will be satisfied with praise, the person who wants love cannot be satisfied with love. No want is ever fulfilled. And therefore I still don't know whether it is better to fear God and keep His commandments or to curse God and die.

 * 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. (Shakespeare's Othello said it first.)

 * Now THERE'S a hollow state to be in, isn't it — to believe in God and get no sign that He's there.

 * How ironic the difference between me and my young son Absalom, between his soliciting the soundest means of overtaking me and having my life, while I was cudgeling my brains for a way to spare his. "Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom," were my mawkish words to my commanders as their men trooped past me toward the positions they would take up in the field outside the wood of Ephraim for the battle in which he would die. "Beware that none touch the young man Absalom," I urged like a fool. No, not like a fool, but like a fond, doting father who will overlook and excuse everything in the child he loves best, and who breaks his heart. And in that singular disparity in our desires abides his lasting victory over me: I loved him and he did not love me.

 * Everybody is as unstable as water.

 * The last thing any sensible human being should want is immortality. As it is, life lasts too long for most of us.

 * I'm not even sure we really had that much need for God as much as we did seem to have a need to believe in Him.

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

 * "If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?"

 * No one lusting for blood is ever innocent. Or satisfied. I have not been innocent. Or satisfied. Just as the man who wants silver will not be satisfied with silver, a man who wants the blood of another will not be satisfied with having that blood, nor the woman with jewels be satisfied with jewels, and the man who wants women will not be satisfied with women. Don't try telling me different. Haven't I looked about me in the city and seen how all labor is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not filled? Don't I know myself that no want is ever satisfied? Wishes are granted, goals attained. But wants? Forget them. They live as long as the person they inhabit.

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

 * "The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don't you know history?"

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

 * 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.

 * 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.

 * Fools hate knowledge

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

 * God had no need for Ecclesiastes to acquaint Him with vanity.

Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man (2000)

 * Anyone seeking public office was not worthy to hold it.

 * She knew Pota had a larger respect for personal privacy than he did for God, Congress, or the U.S. Constitution and never looked at anything there except, occasionally, for the remote control to the television set.

Attributed in posthumous publications

 * There’s a big cocktail party on Martha’s Vineyard. Someone comes up to this writer, I think it’s Joseph Heller, and says, “Joe, see that guy over there? He’s a hedge fund manager, and he made more money yesterday than you made on all the books you have ever published.” Heller looks over, pauses, and says, “Yeah, but I have something he’ll never have: enough.”
 * CNN "Money" Magazine, April 2007, p. 97

Disputed

 * The end result of experiencing terror and injury is not an increase in compassion, but a tendency toward callousness.
 * Cited as being from Catch-22 but really from the discussion, for Chapter 26, in CliffsNotes on Heller’s Catch-22.

Quotes about

 * Bellow (what a wonderful novel Humboldt's Gift is), Updike and Heller started very differently, but their own lives are octopuses taking up more and more space in their books: their divorces etc.
 * 1979 interview in Conversations with Nadine Gordimer edited by Nancy Topping Bazin and Marilyn Dallman Seymour (1990)

title: Joseph Heller


text:
Joan Didion

Joan Didion (December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer known as a novelist, journalist and prose stylist.

Quotes

 * Writers are always selling somebody out.
 * "A Preface", in Slouching Towards Bethlehem

 * Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has a price.
 * "On Self-Respect", in  Slouching Towards Bethlehem

 * The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.
 * "On Self-Respect", in  Slouching Towards Bethlehem

 * Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before?
 * From the novel Run, River

 * One thing you will note about shopping-center theory is that you could have thought of it yourself, and a course in it will go a long way toward dispelling the notion that business proceeds from mysteries too recondite for you and me.
 * "On the Mall", in The White Album

 * We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
 * "The White Album", in The White Album

 * A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.
 * The White Album

 * Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power.
 * "The Howard Hughes Underground," The Saturday Evening Post (23 August 1967)
 * "7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38," Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)

 * In many ways, writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions—with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating—but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.
 * "Why I Write" (1975)

 * Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned.
 * "Why I Write" (1975)

 * When I talk about pictures in my mind I am talking, quite specifically, about images that shimmer around the edges.
 * "Why I Write" (1975)

Quotes about Joan Didion

 * Her nonfiction is so compelling. She finds exactly the right words that she needs to establish setting and character and not one word more.
 * Kathleen Alcalá Interview (2021)

 * ...anxiety was her schtick. She applies her anxiety to everything. And when she’s got it in balance it's brilliant. And when she doesn’t, when her anxiety becomes the subject, it’s lousy.
 * Vivian Gornick Interview (2021)

 * ("Who are some of the women writers around who are not feminists, who are simply writers, or even doing a disservice to the feminist cause?") I think an example would be Joan Didion. First, I have to say I dislike the word cause. I think she does a disservice to the feminist cause, to any progressive cause, and also to the clarity of language. I've read a couple of her books. I don't know anything about her except she's from California. Well, I mean, so is Tillie. Just goes to show. I think her style is very... sentimental really. And indirect and opaque.
 * 1981 interview in Conversations with Grace Paley

 * with Didion I really just feel moral, political, stylistic differences. People think she's such a great stylist, but I don't. I think she's sentimental. I mean, she doesn't overwrite. She doesn't do that at all. I will say that for her. But I don't like her attitude towards people, you know. I don't think she really illuminates them but darkens them so that we see them less by the time we're through. Maybe in the beginning we see them a little bit but by the end we really don't see them. And I don't think she wants us to. And I think that's a political thing.
 * 1981 interview in Conversations with Grace Paley

title: Joan Didion


text:
Mel Brooks

Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminsky on 28 June 1926) is an American actor, director, and screenwriter.

Quotes

 * Lady, it rose below vulgarity.
 * To a woman accusing The Producers of being vulgar; quoted in "Great Movies: The Producers" by Roger Ebert (23 July 2000)

 * Who's the dummy writing this show?!
 * As the voice over for a small curly haired man in a series of cartoon animations for The Electric Company (1971), also repeated at the end of the Electric Company record. Quoted in  Fast-paced Electric Company holds up after all these years" by Mike Shanley, in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' (9 February 2006)

 * I was in the middle of shooting the last few weeks of Blazing Saddles somewhere in the Antelope Valley, and Gene Wilder and I were having a cup of coffee and he said, I have this idea that there could be another "Frankenstein." I said not another — we've had the son of, the cousin of, the brother-in-law, we don't need another Frankenstein. His idea was very simple: What if the grandson of Dr. Frankenstein wanted nothing to do with the family whatsoever. He was ashamed of those wackos. I said, "That's funny."
 * On the initial inspiration for his film Young Frankenstein, in "The Sunday Conversation: Mel Brooks on his 'Young Frankenstein' musical" in The Los Angeles Times (1 August 2010)

 * Comedy is a weird but very beautiful thing. Even though it seems foolish and silly and crazy, comedy has the most to say about the human condition. Because if you can laugh, you can get by. You can survive when things are bad when you have a sense of humor.
 * All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business (2021), p. 451

The 2,000 Year Old Man (1960) & sequels

 * As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.

 * If they [presidents] can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country.

 * To me, tragedy is if I'll cut my finger, that's tragedy...Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die.

 * [explaining that Paul Revere was Anti-Semitic] He was scared they were moving into the neighborhood. "They're coming, they're coming. The Yiddish, they're coming"

 * After I eat asparagus...

 * You know Cuneiform? You know Sanskrit? It's neither of those.

 * Angel of Death ain't kissing me! I'm full of garlic!

 * It's Wheird, there's an H in there. Gotta hit that H otherwise they think I'm some sort of a kook!

 * [on ancient poetry] Nog Nog! Mkellen bebog! V'luch Matuch Maluch M'tog!
 * Translation: Beans Beans! The musical fruits! The more you eat...

 * [on the greatest invention] Liquid Prell.

 * No! You don't wear a hat on your gentles! You wear a hat on your head where you're supposed to wear a hat!

 * [On Churchill's Accent] "Ve must conquer da Narjies!"  Now, we were fighting and killing Nazis.  We all left and went looking for Narjies!

The Producers (1967; 2005)

 * Max Bialystock: That's it, baby, when you've got it, flaunt it, flaunt it!

 * Max Bialystock: I'm wearing a cardboard belt!

 * Stormtrooper Mel : Don't be stupid, be a smarty Come and join the Nazi Party!

 * LSD as Adolf Hitler: Heil Baby!

 * Lead Tenor Stormtrooper: Springtime, for Hitler, and Germany Winter, for Poland and France!

 * Max Bialystock: How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?

 * Leo Bloom: Actors are not animals! They're human beings! Max Bialystock: They are? Have you ever eaten with one?

The Twelve Chairs (1970)
The world's a stage. We're unrehearsed.''' No way of knowing which way it's going. Take your chances, there are no answers. Hope for the best. Expect the worst.
 * '''Hope for the best. Expect the worst.
 * Chorus

Blazing Saddles (1974)

 * Jim "The Waco Kid": My name is Jim, but most people call me...Jim.

 * Sheriff Bart: Good mornin', ma'am! And isn't it a lovely mornin'? Old Woman: Up yours, nigger! Jim "The Waco Kid": [consoling Bart afterwards]: What did you expect? "Welcome, sonny"? "Make yourself at home"? "Marry my daughter"? You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers … these are people of the land … the common clay of the New West. You know – morons.

 * Sheriff Bart: Excuse me while I whip this out.

 * Sheriff Bart: Where the white women at?

 * Railway Worker: You shifty nigger! They said you was hung! Sheriff Bart : And they was right!

 * Sheriff Bart [waking up a drunk Jim in jail]: Are we awake? Jim "The Waco Kid": We're not sure. Are we...black? Sheriff Bart: Yes, we are. Jim "The Waco Kid": Then we're awake, but we're very puzzled.

 * Sheriff Bart: Since I am your host and you are my guest what are your hobbies? What do you like to do in your free time? Jim "The Waco Kid": Oh you know, play chess...screw. Sheriff Bart: (Quickly) Let's play chess!

Young Frankenstein (1974)

 * Igor: My grandfather used to work for your grandfather. Of course the rates have gone up.
 * Igor (limping off): Walk this way — and Dr. Frankenstein limps off after him.
 * Dr. Frankenstein:: Igor, would you give me a hand with the bags? Igor:''': [doing a Groucho Marx] Certainly, you take the blonde and I'll take the one in the turban.
 * Igor:: Sed-a... Inga:: Sed-a... Igor:: Dirty word! He said a dirty word!
 * Dr. Frankenstein Damn your eyes! Igor (pointing at his lazy eye) Too late!

History of the World, Part I (1981)
King Louis XVI: You said it. They stink on ice.
 * Josephus: I'm Josephus, and I'm the main course over at the Colosseum!
 * Count de Monet: [consistently mispronounced as "count da money"] Bearnaise? Bernaise: Yes? Count de Monet: Do we have any of those delicious raisins left? Bearnaise: You ate yours. These are mine. Count de Monet: Au contraire, they are mine! I paid for them! Hand them over! Bearnaise: [gives the bag of raisins to the Count, sotto voce, mimicking] 'Au contraire, I paid for them! They're mine!' [blows a raspberry] Count de Monet: Don't be saucy with me, Bearnaise! Bernaise: [mouths] Bitch.
 * Count de Monet: It is said that the people are revolting
 * Impoverished Paris Street Merchant (Jack Carter): Rats, rats for sale. Get your rats. Good for rat stew, rat soup, or the ever-popular ratatouille.
 * Other Street Merchant: Nothing, I have absolutely nothing for sale!
 * King Louis XVI: [prior to his arrest] It's good to be the king. [also used in Robin Hood- Men In Tights and The Producers [Musical]]
 * Tomás de Torquemada: It's better to lose your skullcap than your skull.
 * Moses: Lord, I shall give these laws unto thy people. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?! All pay heed! The Lord! The Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen- [drops one of the tablets] Oy. Ten! Ten commandments! For all to obey!
 * Madame Defarge: And now, let us end this meeting on a high note. [proceeds to sing a sharp high note, followed by the rest of the revolutionaries]
 * Jail Inmates: Eighty fff...Eighty fff...Eighty fff...Eighty fff...Eighty Six!

To Be Or Not To Be (1983)

 * Excuse me, is this England?
 * While in a Adolf Hitler costume, after crash landing in England at the height of the Battle of Britain.

Spaceballs (1987)

 * Dark Helmet: I see your schwartz is as big as mine.

 * Radar Officer: I've lost the sweeps, the bleeps, and the creeps! [Explains via vocal sound effects] Dark Helmet [aside to Colonel Sandurz]: That's not all he's lost.

 * Dark Helmet : What? You went over my helmet?

 * President Skroob: What the hell, it works on Star Trek!

 * Dark Helmet: What's the matter Colonel Sandurz... chicken?!'''

 * Dark Helmet [after everyone on the bridge announces that their last name is "Asshole."]: I knew it, I'm surrounded by Assholes.'''

 * Lonestar: That's all we needed, a Druish Princess!
 * In the director's commentary Brooks states: I'm both proud and ashamed of that line.

 * Dark Helmet : So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

 * Ahchoo:Man, white men can't jump!!
 * King Richard: From this day forward, all toilets in this kingdom shall be known as...'Johns'!
 * Little John: Let's face it — you've got to be a man to wear tights!
 * Man In Front of Castle: Hey Abbot!
 * Townspeople: A black sheriff? Blinkin: He's Black?! Ahchoo: Why not? It worked in Blazing Saddles.
 * Robin Hood: Watch my back! Achoo: Yo' back just got punched twice.
 * Will Scarlet Blinkin, fix your boobs, you look like a bleeding Picasso.
 * Blinkin Aaahhhh, you lost your arms in battle, but you grew some nice boobs (Blinkin gropes the Venus De Milo statue left behind after creditors take away Loxley Castle)
 * Robin Hood: Because unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with a English accent.
 * Sheriff of Rotingham King illegal forest to pig wild kill in it a is!

Quotes about Brooks

 * Sorted alphabetically by author or source

 * He understands not only with his brain but with his heart. And that might be called love. Not quite sure, but maybe that's the key.
 * Anne Bancroft, in an Associated Press interview (1997)

 * Mel Brooks has all the consistency of Spike Milligan, the subtle self-censorship of Benny Hill, and the human warmth of Bob Monkhouse. It's a good job he has the brassneck and occasional brainstorms of Mel Brooks or he would be a monster.
 * Russell Davies "Comic cuts", The Observer (23 January 1977), p. 25.

 * Mel is sensual with me. He treats me like an uncle — a dirty uncle. He's an earthy man and very moral underneath. He has traditional values.
 * Madeline Kahn, as quoted in "The Mad Mad Mel Brooks" by Paul D. Zimmerman, in Newsweek (17 February 1975)

 * All the apprehensions that surface in Brooks's comedy have the same eventual source: a fear — or, to put it more positively, a hatred — of death.
 * Kenneth Tynan, "Mel Brooks", Profiles (1990), p. 366

title: Mel Brooks