Main characters
It was love at first sight.
The only thing going on was war, and no one seemed to notice but Yossarian and Dunbar.
p 19
'Who's they?' he wanted to know. Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?'
'Every one of them,' Yossarian told him.
'Every one of whom?'
'Every one of whom do you think?'
'I haven't any idea.'
'Then how do you know they aren't?'
[...] strangers he didn't know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn't funny at all.
I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered I was unfit for the military service. You'd think my word would be enough, wouldn't you, since I was a doctor in good standing with my county medical society and with my local Better Business Bureau. But no, it wasn't and they sent this guy around just to make sure I really did have one leg amputated at the hip and was helplessly bedridden with incurable rhumatoid arthritis. Yossarian, we live in an age of distrust and deteriorating spiritual values.
p 52
Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.
Only a fraction of his countrymen would give up their life to win [the war] and it wasn't in his ambition to be among them.
[...] That men would die was a matter of necessity; which men would die, though, was a matter of circumstance, and Yossarian was willing to be the victim of anything but circumstance.
p 78
He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.
p 79
She was shameless, slim, nineteen and aggressive.
p 92
'You haven't got a chance, kid,' he told him glumly. 'They hate Jews.'
'But I'm not Jewish,' answered Clevinger.
'It will make no difference,' Yossarian promised, and Yossarian was right.
'Procrastination is the Thief of Time.'
Yossarian was in love with the maid in the lime-colored panties because she seemed to be the only woman left he could make love to without falling in love with.
There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate.
Yossarian decided to change the subject. 'Now you're changing the subject,' he pointed out diplomatically.
'Everything worth living for,' said Nately, 'is worth dying for.'
'And anything worth dying for,' answered the sacrilegeous old man, 'is certainly worth living for.'
What does upset me, though, is that they think I'm a sucker. They think that they're smart, and that the rest of us are dumb. And, you know, Danby, the thought occurs to me right now, for the first time, that maybe they're right.
p 518
'It must be nice to be in Sweden now,' he observed yearningly. 'The girls are so sweet. And the people are so advanced.'