Catch-22

What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat, a man who was at least as mature and intelligent as you were and who you had to pretend was not? What could you say to him?

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

‘How can he see he’s got flies in his eyes if he’s got flies in his eyes?’

His prices were high, for failure often did not come easily.

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.

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

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

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.