Hellerious Sentences

A sentence (or two) from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 that is usually contradictory, ironic, and/or absurd, similar to a “turn of phrase.”

• Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish (9).
• He was working hard at increasing his life span (9).
• The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no could stand him (9).
• Yossarian was sorry to hear they had a mutual friend. It seemed there was a basis to their conversation after all (12).
• Actually, there were many officers’ clubs that Yossarian had not helped build, but he was proudest of the one on Pianosa (18).
• Appleby was a fair-haired boy from Iowa who believed in God, Motherhood and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any of them, and everybody who knew him liked him.

        “I hate that son of a bitch,” Yossarian growled (18)

• Dunbar liked Clevinger because Clevinger annoyed him and made the time go slow (19).
• The dead man in Yossarian’s tent was a pest, and Yossarian didn’t like him, even though he had never seen him (22).
• Before the war [Colonel Cargill] had been an alert, hard-hitting aggressive marketing executive. He was a very bad marketing executive... He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody (27).
• It made him proud to observe that twenty-nine months in the service had not blunted his genius for ineptitude (28).
• Doc Daneeka was Yossarian’s friend and would do just about nothing in his power to help him (28).
• He decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time was to come down alive (29).
• Doc Daneek was a very neat, clean man whose idea of a good time was to sulk (32).
• Their only hope was that it would never stop raining, and they had no hope because they all knew it would. (118)
• Colonel Cathcart was overjoyed, for he was relieved of the embarrassing commitment to bomb Bologna without blemish to the reputation for valor he had earned by volunteering his men to do it (120).
• Something was terribly wrong if everything was all right and they had no excuse for turning back (140).
• Yossarian muttered an unconscious prayer of thankfulness [that Orr is alive] and then flared up at Orr savagely in a ranting fusion of resentment and relief (151).
• Orr was one of the homeliest freaks Yossarian had ever encountered, and one of the most attractive (229).
• Her pretty face was more repulsive than ever. (291)
• “At least you’ve got a chance. You’re in combat and might get killed. But what about me? I’ve got nothing to hope for.” (304)
• The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them. (405).