Quotes from Something Happened

Joseph Heller ·  576 pages

Rating: (6.3K votes)


“Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened


“i know at last what i want to be when i grow up. when i grow up i want to be a little boy.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened


“Maybe I am senile already and people are too kind to tell me. People are not kind and would tell me. (Maybe people have told me, and I'm too senile to remember).”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened


“I get the willies when I see closed doors.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened


“I have a feeling that someone nearby is soon going to find out something about me that will mean the end, although I can't imagine what that something is.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened



“I frequently feel I'm being taken advantage of merely because I'm asked to do the work I'm paid to do.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened


“It's a real problem to decide whether it's more boring to do something boring than to pass along everything boring that comes in to somebody else and then have nothing to do at all.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened


“I suppose it is just about impossible for someone like me to rebel anymore and produce any kind of lasting effect. I have lost the power to upset things that I had as a child; I can no longer change my environment or even disturb it seriously.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened


“trying to evade the people who frighten us. We come to work, have lunch, and go home. We goose-step in and goose-step out, changing our partner and wander all about, sashay around for a pat on the head, and promenade home till we all drop dead.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened


“That's what Paradise is- never knowing the difference.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened



“Depreciating motels, junked automobiles, and quick-food joints grow like amber waves of grain.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened


“And between us now there is this continual underground struggle over something trivial and nebulous that won't abate and has lasted nearly as long as the two of us have known each other. "I love you.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened


“Niet nikoho, kým by som bol radšej než sám sebou - aj keď sa v skutočnosti nemám rád a dokonca som si ani nie istý, kto som.”
― Joseph Heller, quote from Something Happened


About the author

Joseph Heller
Born place: in Brooklyn, New York, The United States
Born date May 1, 1923
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“This is a sickness rooted and inherent in the nature of a tyranny: that he that holds it does not trust his friends.”
― Aeschylus, quote from Prometheus Bound


“the worst thing that could happen to a colored child in the South was for a parent to hear that a child was acting up. There would be no appeals, the punishment swift and physical. The arbitrary nature of grown people’s wrath gave colored children practice for life in the caste system, which is why parents, forced to train their children in the ways of subservience, treated their children as the white people running things treated them. It was preparation for the lower-caste role children were expected to have mastered by puberty.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, quote from The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration


“Desiree. It's like falling in love every night and having your heart broken every morning... Having more memory is just a way of distorting a greater amount of the past.”
― Craig Clevenger, quote from Dermaphoria


“On the first day of Human Sexuality, Ruth Ramsey wore a short lime green skirt, a clingy black top, and strappy high-heeled sandals, the kind of attention-getting outfit she normally wouldn't have worn on a date---not that she was going on a lot of dates these days---let alone to work. ”
― Tom Perrotta, quote from The Abstinence Teacher


“I feel like I’m stuck in a bad movie, with a little devil sitting on one shoulder and an angel on the other.  But the goddamn devil is twice the size and my angel is a fucking mute.  Great, I have a fucking mute angel.”
― Vi Keeland, quote from Worth the Fight


Interesting books

Alpha
(13.6K)
Alpha
by Rachel Vincent
The Hour of the Star
(10.2K)
The Hour of the Star
by Clarice Lispector
Devoured
(36K)
Devoured
by Emily Snow
Nothing Left to Lose
(13.7K)
Nothing Left to Lose
by Kirsty Moseley
Cosmos
(2.1K)
Cosmos
by Witold Gombrowicz
Sweet Thing
(14.8K)
Sweet Thing
by Renee Carlino

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.