Joseph Heller Quotes on Life
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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.
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'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?'
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The years are too short, the days are too long.
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When I grow up I want to be a little boy.
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In my middle years, I have exchanged the position of the fetus for the position of a corpse.
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Whether God is dead or not hardly matters, for we would use him no differently anyway.
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I hate God and I hate life. And the closer I come to death, the more I hate life.
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The wise man dies no better or more wisely than the fool. In what way, then, is the wise man wise?
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If character is destiny, the good are damned.
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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.
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The last thing any sensible human being should want is immortality. As it is, life lasts too long for most of us.
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All is vanity, you know, ALL in the long run is but vanity and vexation of spirit.
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I imagine that God Himself frequently wants to feel like a king. Why else would He create the world?
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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.
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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.
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Forever goes quick.