“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
Joseph Heller
Born place: in Brooklyn, New York, The United States
Born date May 1, 1923
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“Close your eyes now,' the blind man said to me. I did it. I closed them just like he said.
'Are they closed?' he said. 'Don't fudge.'
'They're closed,' I said.
'Keep them that way,' he said. He said, 'Don't stop now. Draw.'
So we kept on with it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now.
Then he said, 'I think that's it. I think you got it,' he said. 'Take a look. What do you think?'
But I had my eyes closed. I thought I'd keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do.
'Well?" he said. 'Are you looking?'
My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything.
'It's really something,' I said.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Cathedral
“A few more years of the same, though, and I got used to it: I would load entire libraries from country castles and city mansions, fine, rare, leather- and Morroco-bound books, load whole trains full, and as soon as a train had thirty cars, off it would go to Switzerland or Austria, one kilogram of rare books for the equivalent of one crown of convertible currency, and nobody blinked an eye, nobody shed a tear, not even I myself, no, all I did was stand there smiling as I watched the train hauling those priceless libraries off to Switzerland and Austria for one crown in convertible currency a kilo. By then I had mustered the strength to look upon misfortune with composure, to still my emotions, by then I had begun to understand the beauty of destruction and I loaded more and more freight cars, and more and more trains left the station heading west at one crown per kilogram, and as I stood there staring after the red lantern hanging from the last car, as I stood there leaning on a lamppost like Leonardo da Vinci, who stood leaning on a column and looking on while French soldiers used his statue for target practice, shooting away horse and rider bit by bit, I thought how Leonardo, like me, standing and witnessing such horrors with complete composure, had realized even than that neither the heavens are humane nor is any man with a head on his shoulders.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, quote from Too Loud a Solitude
“Since living meant accumulating sin, I thought dying would be much better for the world. These”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
“The law perverted! The law — and, in its wake, all the collective forces of the nation — the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law become the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check! The law guilty of that very iniquity which it was its mission to punish! Truly, this is a serious fact, if it exists, and one to which I feel bound to call the attention of my fellow citizens.”
― Frédéric Bastiat, quote from The Law
“A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.”
― James C. Collins, quote from Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
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The Darkest SecretBookQuoters 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.
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