"It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth. impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility. plunder into philanthropy. thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required NO CHARACTER"

— Joseph Heller