“Shooting skeet eight hours a month was excellent training for them. It trained them to shoot skeet.”

“Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven-times-seventeen years.“I think you’re crazy,” was the way Clevinger had responded to Dunbar’s discovery.“Who wants to know?” Dunbar answered.“I mean it,” Clevinger insisted.“Who cares?” Dunbar answered.“I really do. I’ll even go as far as to concede that life seems longer i—““—is longer i—““—is longer—IS longer? All right, is longer if it’s filled with periods of boredom and discomfort, b—““Guess how fast?” Dunbar said suddenly.“Huh?”“They go,” Dunbar explained.“Who?”“Years.”“Years?”“Years,” said Dunbar. “Years, years, years.”“Do you know how long a year takes when it’s going away?” Dunbar asked Clevinger. “This long.” He snapped his fingers. “A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you’re an old man.”“Old?” asked Clevinger with surprise. “What are you talking about?”“Old.”“I’m not old.”“You’re inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow time down?” Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.“Well, maybe it is true,” Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it’s to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?”“I do,” Dunbar told him.“Why?” Clevinger asked.“What else is there?”

“They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."And what difference does that make?”

“What would they do to me," he asked in confidential tones, "if I refused to fly them?"We'd probably shoot you," ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied.We?" Yossarian cried in surprise. "What do you mean, we? Since when are you on their side?"If you're going to be shot, whose side do you expect me to be on?" ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen retorted”

“It sure is a pleasure not having Flume around in the mess hall any more. No more of that 'Pass the salt, Walt.'""Or 'Pass the bread, Fred.'""Or 'Shoot me a beet, Pete.”

“She destroyed egos by the score and made men hate themselves in the morning by the way she found them, used them, and tossed them aside.”

“...He was irritable with Orr, who had found two crab apples somewhere and walked with them in his cheeks until Yossarian spied them there and made him take them out. Then Orr found two horse chestnuts somewhere and slipped those in until Yossarian detected them and snapped at him again to take the crab apples out of his mouth. Orr grinned and replied that they were not crab apples but horse chestnuts and that they were not in his mouth but in his hands, but Yossarian was not able to understand a single word he said because of the horse chestnuts in his mouth and made him take them out anyway.”