Catch-22

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.

The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.

‘Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?’

Throughout the civilized world, from Battery Park to Fulton Street, he was known as a dependable man for a fast tax write-off.

Because he needed a friend so desperately, he never found one.

Yossarian had done his best to warn him the night before. ‘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. ‘They’re after everybody.’

He had to start at the top and work his way down, and with sympathetic friends in Washington, losing money was no simple matter. It took months of hard work and careful misplanning.

He had opposed his daughter’s marriage to Colonel Moodus because he disliked attending weddings.

Kraft was a skinny, harmless kid from Pennsylvania who wanted only to be liked, and was destined to be disappointed in even so humble and degrading an ambition.