J D Salinger Quotes

“I just hope that one day - preferably when we’re both blind drunk - we can talk about it.”
― J.D. Salinger

“I was surrounded by phonies...They were coming in the goddam window.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Oh, I don’t know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don’t know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It’s more interesting and all.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“If you're not in
the mood, you can't do that stuff right.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“That’s what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It mad me so damn sad when I thought about it, their never going anywhere swanky for lunch or anything. I knew it wasn’t too important, but it made me sad anyway.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of trying to make me happy”
― J.D. Salinger

“a stunning glimpse of Buddy, at a later date by innumerable years, quite bereft of my dubious, loving company, writing about this very party on a very large, jet-black, very moving, gorgeous typewriter. He is smoking a cigarette, occasionally clasping his hands and placing them on the top of his head in a thoughtful, exhausted manner. His hair is gray; he is older than you are now, Les! The veins in his hands are slightly prominent in the glimpse, so I have not mentioned the matter to him at all, partially considering his youthful prejudice against veins showing in poor adults’ hands. So it goes. You would think this particular glimpse would pierce the casual witness’s heart to the quick, disabling him utterly, so that he could not bring himself to discuss the glimpse in the least with his beloved, broadminded family. This is not exactly the case; it mostly makes me take an exceedingly deep breath as a simple, brisk measure against getting dizzy. It is his room that pierces me more than anything else. It is all his youthful dreams realized to the full! It has one of those beautiful windows in the ceiling that he has always, to my absolute knowledge, fervently admired from a splendid reader’s distance! All round about him, in addition, are exquisite shelves to hold his books, equipment, tablets, sharp pencils, ebony, costly typewriter, and other stirring, personal effects. Oh, my God, he will be overjoyed when he sees that room, mark my words! It is one of the most smiling, comforting glimpses of my entire life and quite possibly with the least strings attached. In a reckless manner of speaking, I would far from object if that were practically the last glimpse of my life.”
― J.D. Salinger, Hapworth 16, 1924

“Thirty-seven of them will be about shy, reclusive pennsylvania dutch lesbian who wants to write, told first-person by a lecherous hired hand. In dialect.”
― J.D. Salinger

“The only way he ever did anything was if you yelled at him.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“But he was mostly the kind of a handsome guy that if your parents saw his picture in your Year Book, they’d right away say,
“Who’s this boy?” I mean he was mostly a Year Book kind of handsome guy.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I started imitating one of those guys in the movies. In one of those musicals. I hate the movies like poison, but I get a bang imitating them.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“For once in my stupid life, I was really glad to see him. He took my mind off the other stuff.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“That guy had just about everything. Sinus trouble, pimples, lousy teeth, halitosis, crumby fingernails.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Well, the thing is, I don’t want to stay at any hotels on the East Side where I might run into some acquaintances of mine. I’m traveling incognito.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“She was always reading, and she read very good books. She read a lot of poetry and all.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“New York’s terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“He was about the touchiest guy I ever met. Everything you said made him sore.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“You would’ve puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn’t funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I’d hate it. I wouldn’t even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I’d play it in the goddam closet.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I’m 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

“In the first place, I’m sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don’t care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down.”
― 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

“What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would’ve done it, too, if I’d been sure somebody’d cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn’t want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“But Catholics are always trying to find out if you’re a Catholic even if they don’t know your last name.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Must we pursue this horrible trend of thought?”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“It’s funny. You take adults, they look lousy when they’re asleep and they have their mouths way open, but kids don’t.
Kids look all right. They can even have spit all over the pillow and they still look all right.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I know he’s dead! Don’t you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can’t I? Just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them, for God’s sake—especially if they were about a “thousand times nicer than the people you know that’re alive and all.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I’m not trying to tell you,” he said, “that only educated and scholarly 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. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a “passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And—most important—nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I mean how do you know what you’re “going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don’t. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it’s a stupid question.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye