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The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they might be related to one another in ways frowned on by the Old Testament.

What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat

Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take shorthand. Not my last line, stupid! the colonel shouted. Somebody else's. 'Read me back the last line,'...

Inscribed on the back was a line from Virgil in Latin: Audentes fortuna juvat. Fortune favors the bold. He'd been bold all right, but Fortune hadn't gotten the memo.

The rain was pattering hypnotically on the plane's exterior.

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

He wondered often how he would ever recognize the first chill, flush, twinge, ache, belch, sneeze, stain, lethargy, vocal slip, loss of balance or lapse of memory that would signal the inevitable...

It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?

Havermeyer was a lead bombardier who never missed. Yossarian was a lead bombardier who had been demoted because he no longer gave a damn whether he missed or not. He had decided to live forever or die...

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...

Why," swore Yossarian at him approvingly, "you evil-eyed, mechanicallyaptituded, disaffiliated son of a bitch, did you walk around with anything in your cheeks?

He felt imprisoned in an airplane. In an airplane there was absolutely no place in the world to go except to another part of the airplane. Doc Daneeka had been told that people who enjoyed climbing...

Steal Captain Black's car, said Yossarian. That's what I always do. We can't steal anybody's car. Since you began stealing the nearest car every time you wanted one, nobody leaves the ignition on.

The man who declares that survival at all costs is the end of existence is morally dead, because he's prepared to sacrifice all other values which give life its meaning. -SIDNEY HOOK

He glanced at me, then chuckled. Sprezzatura's an Italian word. Means the art of making something difficult look easy.

Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar. What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?

Men," Colonel Cargill began in Yossarian's squadron, measuring his pauses carefully. "You're American officers. The officers of no other army in the world can make that statement. Think about it.

Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions then he is caught in Catch-22: if he flies he is crazy, and doesn't have to; but if he doesn't want to he must be sane and has...

It's only that I feel an injustice has been committed. Why should I have somebody else's malaria and you have my dose of clap?

he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall?

You just came out of the hospital ten days ago," Milo reminded him reprovingly. "You can't keep running into the hospital every time something happens you don't like. No, the best thing to do is fly...

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.

It's a small wound. All we have to do is stop the bleeding, clean it out and put a few stitches in." "But I've never had a chance to operate before. Which one is the scalpel? Is this one the scalpel?

Yossarian wrinkled his forehead with quizzical amusement. You won't marry me because I'm crazy, and you say I'm crazy because I want to marry you? Is that right?

Five is very good, Milo, he observed with enthusiasm, spying a ray of hope. That averages out to almost one combat mission every two months. And I'll bet your total doesn't even include the time you...

In a way the C.I.D. man was pretty lucky, because 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...

Bribery is against the law, and you know it. But it's not against the law to make a profit, is it? So it can't be against the law for me to bribe someone in order to make a fair profit, can it? No, of...

Yossarian quickened his pace to get away, almost ran. The night was filled with horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the world, like a psychiatrist through a...

He could not make them understand that he was a crotchety old fogey of twenty-eight, that he belonged to another generation, another era, another world, that having a good time bored him and was not...

Keep away, keep away, Hungry Joe screamed. I said keep away, keep away, you goddam stinking lousy son of a bitch. At least we found out what he dreams about, Dunbar observed wryly. He dreams about...

All right, I'll dance with you, she said, before Yossarian could even speak. But I won't let you sleep with me. Who asked you? Yossarian asked her. You don't want to sleep with me? she exclaimed with...

Some are born mediocre, others become mediocre, and others are required.

Sure there's a catch, Doc Daneeka replied. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy. There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for...