All Quotes

"Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them."

"Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing."

"He could never decide whether to furgle them or photograph them, for he had found it impossible to do both simultaneously."

"The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character."

"The yellow moon turned orange and was soon red as the setting sun."

"I said it again as a German might. "Rabinovitz. Ich bin Lew Rabinowitz, LR, von Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York. Du Kennst?" And then I spoke Yiddish. "Und ich bin ein Yid. Farshtest?" And then in English. "I am a Jew. Understand?" And then in my fractured German. "Ich bin Jude. Verstehst?" Now they didn't know where to look, but they did not want to look at me. I've got blue eyes that can turn into slits of ice, Claire still tells me, and a pale, European skin that can turn red fast when I laugh hard or get mad, and I wasn't sure they believed me."

"There was no way of knowing anything, he knew, not even that there was no way of knowing anything."

"I get the willies when I see closed doors. Even at work, where I am doing so well now, the sight of a closed door is sometimes enough to make me dread that something horrible is happening behind it, something that is going to affect me adversely; if I am tired and dejected from a night of lies or booze or sex or just nerves and insomnia, I can almost smell the disaster mounting invisibly and flooding out toward me through the frosted glass panes. My hands may perspire, and my voice may come out strange. I wonder why. Something must have happened to me sometime."

"I do know that girls in their early twenties are easy and sweet. (Girls in their late twenties are easier but sad, and that isn't so sweet.) They are easy, I think, because they are sweet, and they are sweet, I think, because they are dumb."

"The years are too short, the days are too long."

"When I grow up I want to be a little boy."

"In my middle years, I have exchanged the position of the fetus for the position of a corpse."

"Women my wife's age with broken marriages take up robustly with fellows much younger than themselves, sometimes boys, and their husbands don't like that part of it at all. (It's a means they have of really sticking it to us. The husbands can do without the money and kids. But they can't abide their wives' humping a younger dick and letting everyone know.)"

"Women don't suffer from penis envy. Men do."

"Forever goes quick."

"Gold was opposed to segregation and equally opposed to integration. Certainly he did not believe that women or homosexuals should suffer persecution or discrimination. On the other hand, he was privately opposed to all equal rights amendments, for he certainly did not want members of either group associating with him on levels of equality or familiarity."

"In my letter confirming my employment, Your Majesty, you claimed you wanted Siam to take its place among the nations of the modern world. You spoke of building something greater than yourself. A country where no man is above the law. Which is why I chose to come here."

"Most people do not see the world as it is. They see it as they are."

"Everyone should have legends. It allows us to dream."

"[to Anna] When a woman who has much to say says nothing, her silence can be deafening."

"Jodie Foster - Anna Leonowens"

"Chow Yun-Fat - King Mongkut"

"Bai Ling - Tuptim"

"Tom Felton - Louis T. Leonowens"

"Randall Duk Kim - General Alak"

"Kay Siu Lim - Prince Chaofa, King Mongkut's Brother"

"Melissa Campbell - Princess Fa-Ying"

"Deanna Yusoff - Queen Thiang"

"Geoffrey Palmer - Lord John Bradley"

"Ann Firbank - Lady Bradley"

"Bill Stewart - Mycroft Kincaid, East India Trading Co."

"Sean Ghazi - Khun Phra Balat"

"Syed Alwi - The Kralahome, Prime Minister"

"Ramli Hassan - King Chulalongkorn"

"Keith Chin - Prince Chulalongkorn"

"Alif Silpachai - Chulalongkorn's brother"

"Kenneth Tsang - Justice Phya Phrom"

"Shantini Venugopal - the nanny"

"Goh Yi Wai - Mongkut's daughter"

"Harith Iskander - Nikorn"

"She is a soldier. She will not be defeated."

"Gary: Beryl Willard is extremely competent. Beryl Willard has been extremely competent, man and boy, for forty years. In addition to her extreme competence, she has contrived, with uncanny skill, to sustain a spotless reputation for being the most paralysing, epoch-making, monumental, world-shattering, God-awful bore that ever drew breath...I will explain one thing further - it is this. No prayer, no bribe, no threat, no power, human or divine, would induce me to go to Africa with Beryl Willard. I wouldn't go as far as Wimbledon with Beryl Willard. Liz: What he's trying to say is that he doesn't care for Beryl Willard."

"Mad about the boy I know it's stupid to be mad about the boy I'm so ashamed of it but must admit the sleepless nights I've had About the boy"

"On the silverscreen He melts my foolish heart in every single scene Although I'm quite aware that here and there are traces of the cad About the boy"

"Lord knows I'm not a fool girl I really shouldn't care Lord knows I'm not a school girl In the flurry of her first affair."

"Will it ever cloy This odd diversity of misery and joy I'm feeling quite insane and young again And all because I'm mad about the boy"

"So if I could employ A little magic that will finally destroy This dream that pains me and enchains me But I can't because I'm mad... I'm mad about the boy"

"Gary: You ought never to have joined the Athenaeum Club, Henry: it was disastrous. Henry: I really don’t see why. Gary: It’s made you pompous. Henry: It can’t have. I’ve always been too frightened to go into it."

"Morris: I'll never speak to you again until the day I die! Gary: Well, we can have a nice little chat then, can't we?"

"His wife "ruled the roost," and in governing the governor, governed the province, which might thus be said to be under petticoat government."