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Comment by plmpsu | Hacker News Reader

"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."

Catch-22

The full quote is worth your while:

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/496826-dunbar-loved-shootin...

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The full book is worth your while.

It's admittedly a long read, but one of the funniest books I've ever read, chock-full of absurd conversations and timeless satire.

https://bookshop.org/books/catch-22-9781451626650/9781451626...

It is indeed funny at first, and for a long while thereafter. After though, it descends at first by degrees then quite abruptly into depressing grimness, revealing the scope of a tragedy that was the case all along, only veiled by that wonderfully absurd, sometimes black humor.

I love this book like few other novels, partly because it has so much more impact than a simple comedy would..

Indeed. The first time I read that I was actually crying laughing on the train ... and then as the book progresses you realise the depth of the sadness that was underneath all along.

"We'll lose on every deal, but we'll make it up in volume!"

This story made me think of the joke about the guy who was told by his doctor that he has only 6 months to live. He decides to move in with his mother-in-law, because living with her for 6 months will seem like forever.

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