Manuela Rossi > Manuela's Quotes

“I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“Did you know, God damn it, that Les was all for bringing a tangerine in to you last night before he went to bed? My God. Even Bessie can't stand stories with tangerines in them. And God knows I can't. If you're going to go on with this breakdown business, I wish to hell you'd go back to college to have it. Where you're not the baby of the family. And where, God knows, nobody'll have any urges to bring you any tangerines. And where you don't keep your goddam tap shoes in the closet.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“If or when I do start going to an analyst, I hope to God he has the foresight to let a dermatologist sit in on the consultation. A hand specialist. I have scars on my hands from touching certain people... Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me. Other things, too. Charlotte once ran away from me, outside the studio, and I grabbed her dress to stop her, to keep her near me. A yellow cotton dress I loved because it was too long for her. I still have a lemon-yellow mark on the palm of my right hand. Oh God, if I'm anything by a clincal name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“If you had to relive your life exactly as it was – same successes and failures, same happiness, same miseries, same mixture of comedy and tragedy – would you want to? Was it worth it?”
― Gavin Extence, The Universe Versus Alex Woods

“Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I knew how many zeroes there were in a quintillion, but I thought that algebra lived in ponds.”
― Gavin Extence, The Universe Versus Alex Woods

“I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“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.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Sleep tight, ya morons!”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I have scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“She was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hand all the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something. Jane was different. We'd get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we'd start holding hands, and we wouldn't quit till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a big deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Why are you breaking down, incidentally? I mean if you’re able to go into a collapse with all your might, why can’t you use the same energy to stay well and busy?”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I don't know about bores. Maybe you shouldn't feel too sorry if you see some swell girl getting married to them. They don't hurt anybody, most of them, and maybe they're secretly all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I'll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.
As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
“Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles