J.D. Salinger Quotes

Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.

I didn't want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck.

But I'm Crazy. I swear to God I am.

I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school.

I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.

I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy.

As much as anything else, it was a stare, not so paradoxically, of a privacy-lover who, once his privacy has been invaded, doesn't quite approve when the invader just gets up and leaves, one-two-three, like that.

Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was, in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces, a stunning and final girl.

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

This is the squalid, or moving, part of the story, and the scene changes. The people change, too. I'm still around, but from here on in, for reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose, I've disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me.

Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. - Holden Caulfield

People always think something's all true. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am, I really do. But people never notice. People never notice anything.

You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. 'Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.

I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.

But I was afraid of the questions (much more than the accusations) you might both put to me.

A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn't stink a little bit of the writer's pride in having given up his pride.

Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are... Sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God.

I'm not trying to tell you," he said "that only educated men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so.But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with--which, unfortunately, is rarely the case--tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are MEREly brilliant and creative.

Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

I think it should be done over, Buddy. …Please make peace with your wit. It's not going to go away, Buddy. To dump it on your own advice would be as bad and unnatural as dumping your adjectives and your adverbs because Prof. B. wants you to. What does he know about it? What do you really know about your own wit?I've been sitting here tearing up notes to you. I keep starting to say things like 'This one is wonderfully constructed,' and 'The conversation between the two cops is terrific.' So I'm hedging. I'm not sure why. I started to get a little nervous right after you began to read. It sounded like the beginning of something your arch-enemy Bob B. calls a rattling good story. Don't you think he would call this a step in the right direction? Doesn't that worry you? Even what is funny about the woman on the back of the truck doesn't sound like something you think is funny. It sounds much more like something that you think is universally considered funny. I feel gypped. Does that make you mad? You can say our relatedness spoils my judgement. It worries me enough. But I'm also just a reader. Are you a writer or just a writer of rattling good stories. I mind getting a rattling good story from you.

If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.

Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

You don't know how to talk to people you don't like. Don't love, really. You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes.

He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were.

When I really worry about something, I don´t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don´t go. I´m too worried to go. I don´t want to interrupt my worrying to go.

It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don't know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way.

I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?

I always pick a gorgeous time to fall over a suitcase or something.

when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.