[b]Joseph Heller
Be thankful you’re healthy.
Be bitter you’re not going to stay that way.
Be glad you’re even alive.
Be furious you’re going to die.[/b]
Repeat as necessary.
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.
If nothing else, you catch them off guard.
He was like a man who had grown frozen with horror once and had never come completely unthawed.
I hear that.
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?
You wonder if this will ever be resolved.
He woke up blinking with a slight pain in his head and opened his eyes upon a world boiling in chaos in which everything was in proper order.
Come on, admit it: It might be true.
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?
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.
No, this is not just a military thing.