“Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include tooth decay in His divine system of creation? Why in the world did He ever create pain?''Pain?' Lieutenant Shiesskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. 'Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.''And who created the dangers?' Yossarian demanded. 'Why couldn't He have used a doorbell to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead?''People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes right in the middle of their foreheads.''They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony, don't they?”

“There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?”

“I was thinking of people who say that happiness is impossible on earth. Look how hard they all try to find some joy in life. Look how they struggle for it. Why should any living creature exist in pain? By what conceivable right can anyone demand that a human being exist for anything but for his own joy? Every one of them wants it. Every part of him wants it. But they never find it. I wonder why.”

“My father says that fear is good; it's the body's alarm system, it warns us of danger. But sometimes danger can't be avoided, and then you have to forget about being afraid.”

“...I don't understand this gap you see between us, but can't you meet me somewhere in the middle?" "The middle of what?" "I don't know, the middle of tomorrow and forever, the middle of life and death, the middle of normal and paranormal. Where we've always been." I bit my lip, nodding against his forehead. "There's a place for us there, right?" "Always." He put his lips to mine, sealing our own little spot in the world. Together.”

“There’s a beautiful poem at the beginning of a collection of books we call the Bible. In that poem, it is written: "Then God said, ‘Let us make man.’” God then recognized that it was not good for man to be alone. We can all agree on that one, I think. Loneliness is one of the most excruciating pains that the human heart, or any heart, has to go through.What did God do about it?What was His remedy?What was His answer?He created marriage. He didn’t create dating, He didn’t create courting - He created marriage.”