absurdity

"I don't even know Washington Irving's name."

I used to get a big kick out of saving people's lives. Now I wonder what the hell's the point, since they all have to die anyway. "Oh, there's a point, all right," Dunbar assured him. "Is there? What is the point?" "The point is to keep them from dying for as long as you can." "Yeah, but what's the point, since they all have to die anyway?" "The trick is not to think about that." "Never mind the trick. What the hell's the point?" Dunbar pondered in silence for a few moments. "Who the hell knows?"

every officer in the four squadrons began devouring fresh eggs in an insatiable orgy of fresh-egg eating.

"I will. I'll marry you." "Ma non posso sposarti." "Why can't you marry me?" "Perchè sei pazzo." "Why am I crazy?" "Perchè vuoi sposarmi." Yossarian wrinkled his forehead with quizzical amusement. "You won't marry me because I'm crazy, and you say I'm crazy because I want to marry you? Is that right?" "Si."

He could relax in the hospital, since no one there expected him to do anything. All he was expected to do in the hospital was die or get better, and since he was perfectly all right to begin with, getting better was easy.

Someone had fiddled when he should have faddled, and a nuclear weapon had gone off … and one hellish big one, from the look and the feel.

There's no use in denying it: this has been a bad week. I've started drinking my own urine.

We are here for no purpose, unless we can invent one. Of that I am sure. The human condition in an exploding universe would not have been altered one iota if, rather than live as I have, I had done nothing but carry a rubber ice-cream cone from closet to closet for sixty years.

VLADIMIR: That passed the time. ESTRAGON: It would have passed in any case. VLADIMIR: Yes, but not so rapidly. [Pause.] ESTRAGON: What do we do now? VLADIMIR: I don't know.

VLADIMIR: And where were we yesterday evening according to you? ESTRAGON: How would I know? In another compartment. There's no lack of void. VLADIMIR: [sure of himself] Good. We weren't here yesterday evening. Now what did we do yesterday evening? ESTRAGON: Do? VLADIMIR: Try and remember. ESTRAGON: Do... I suppose we blathered. VLADIMIR: [controlling himself] About what? ESTRAGON: Oh... this and that I suppose, nothing in particular. [With assurance.] Yes, now I remember, yesterday evening we spent blathering about nothing in particular. That's been going on now for half a century.

VLADIMIR: Where are your boots? ESTRAGON: I must have thrown them away. VLADIMIR: When? ESTRAGON: I don't know. VLADIMIR: Why? ESTRAGON: [exasperated] I don't know why I don't know!

"The meaningless absurdity of life," wrote Leo Tolstoy, "is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man."

These unhappy agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth—a nightmare of meaninglessness without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.