Something Happened Quotes

“Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“I frequently feel I'm being taken advantage of merely because I'm asked to do the work I'm paid to do.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“It's a real problem to decide whether it's more boring to do something boring than to pass along everything boring that comes in to somebody else and then have nothing to do at all.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“Maybe I am senile already and people are too kind to tell me. People are not kind and would tell me. (Maybe people have told me, and I'm too senile to remember).”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“I have a feeling that someone nearby is soon going to find out something about me that will mean the end, although I can't imagine what that something is.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“I get the willies when I see closed doors.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“trying to evade the people who frighten us. We come to work, have lunch, and go home. We goose-step in and goose-step out, changing our partner and wander all about, sashay around for a pat on the head, and promenade home till we all drop dead.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“i know at last what i want to be when i grow up. when i grow up i want to be a little boy.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“In the office in which I work there are five people of whom I am afraid. Each of these five people is afraid of four people (excluding overlaps), for a total of twenty, and each of these twenty people is afraid of six people, making a total of one hundred and twenty people who are feared by at least one person. Each of these one hundred and twenty people is afraid of the other one hundred and nineteen, and all of these one hundred and forty-five people are afraid of the twelve men at the top who helped found and build the company and now own and direct it.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“That's what Paradise is- never knowing the difference.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“I suppose it is just about impossible for someone like me to rebel anymore and produce any kind of lasting effect. I have lost the power to upset things that I had as a child; I can no longer change my environment or even disturb it seriously.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“Depreciating motels, junked automobiles, and quick-food joints grow like amber waves of grain.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“I was watching you sleep," a girl will tell you while she's still in love with you. "You were snoring.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“And between us now there is this continual underground struggle over something trivial and nebulous that won't abate and has lasted nearly as long as the two of us have known each other. "I love you.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“My act of rebellion would be absorbed like rain on an ocean and leave no trace. I would not cause a ripple.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“When salesmen are doing well, there is pressure upon them to begin doing better, for fear they may start doing worse.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“What would happen if, deliberately, calmly, with malice aforethought and obvious premeditation, I disobeyed?
I know what would happen: nothing. Nothing would happen. And the knowledge depresses me. Some girl downstairs I never saw before (probably with a bad skin also) would simply touch a few keys on some kind of steel key punch that would set things right again, and it would be as though I had not disobeyed at all. My act of rebellion would be absorbed like rain on an ocean and leave no trace. I would not cause a ripple.
I suppose it is just about impossible for someone like me to rebel anymore and produce any kind of lasting effect. I have lost the power to upset things that I had as a child; I can no longer change my environment or even disturb it seriously. They would simply fire and forget me as soon as I tried. They would file me away.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“She listens to him with great intensity because she is paying no attention to him at all.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“...and hidden somewhere inside every bluff or quiet man and woman I know ... is the fully formed, but uncompleted, little boy or girl that once was and will always remain as it always has been, suspended lonesomely inside its own past, waiting hopefully, vainly, to resume, longing insatiably for company, pining desolately for that time to come when it will be safe and sane and possible to burst outside exuberantly, stretch its arms, fill its lungs with invigorating air, without fear at last, and call:
"Hey! Here I am. Couldn't you find me? Can't we be together now?”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“Niet nikoho, kým by som bol radšej než sám sebou - aj keď sa v skutočnosti nemám rád a dokonca som si ani nie istý, kto som.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“The company takes a strong view against psychotherapy for executives because it denotes unhappiness, and unhappiness is a disgraceful social disease for which there is no excuse or forgiveness. Cancer, pernicious anemia, and diabetes are just fine, and even people with multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease may continue to go far in the company until they are no longer allowed to go on at all. But unhappiness is fatal. If my daughter or son were to commit suicide, that would be overlooked, because children do things like that, and that's the way kids are. But if my wife were to jump to her death without a prior record of psychiatric disturbance, did it only because she was unhappy, my chances for further advancement would be over. I'd be ruined.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“It's a wise person, I guess, who knows he's dumb, and an honest person who knows he's a liar. And it's a dumb person, I guess, who's convinced he is wise.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“...if you asked any one of them if he would choose to spend the rest of his life working for the company, he would give you a resounding No!, regardless of what inducements were offered. I was that high once. If you asked me that same question today, I would also give you a resounding No! and add:
"I think I'd rather die now."
But I am making no plans to leave.
I have the feeling now that there is no place left for me to go.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“I felt more at home in the army than I did in my house. (I feel more at home in my office now than I do at home, and I don't feel at home there. I get along better with the people there.) I don't think I ever had a good time at home on a furlough. I don't think I've ever had a good time on a vacation (I'm not sure I've ever had a good time anywhere); I find myself waiting for them to end. We have too many holidays. Birthdays and anniversaries come around too often. I'm always buying presents or writing out checks. The years are too short, the days are too long.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“Minute imperfections of his have become insufferable. Irritability sizzles inside me like electric shock waves, saws against the bones of my head like a serrated blade. I can quiver out of my skin, gag, get instant, knifing headaches from the way he sucks on a tooth, drums his fingers, mispronounces certain words, says byootefoolinstead of beautifuland between you and Iinstead of between you and me,and laughs when I correct him — I have an impulse to correct him every single time and have to stifle it. The words spear through my consciousness and slam to a stop against bone, the inside of my skull. I can restrain myself from saying them, but I cannot suppress the need to want to. I am incensed with him for provoking it. He bubbles saliva in the corner of his mouth and still wears the white smudge on his chapped lips of whatever antacid pill or solution he has been taking for his stomach distress.
"Heh-heh," he has fallen into the habit of saying, with lowered, escaping eyes.
"Heh-heh," I want to mock back.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“I wish I knew what to wish.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“In a democracy, the government is the people," Milo explained. "We're people, aren't we?" So we might just as well keep the money and eliminate the middleman. Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry. If we pay the government everything we owe it, we'll only be encouraging governmental control and discouraging other individuals from bombing their own men and planes. We'll be taking away their incentive.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“This makes my boredom worse. It’s a real problem to decide whether it’s more boring to do something boring than to pass along everything boring that comes in to somebody else and then have nothing to do at all.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“But that doesn’t seem to matter; all that does matter is that the information comes from a reputable source.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“I don’t really like them, either (but I pretend I do).”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened