Christopher Wallace

“Listen. How long you been going around with her, this sculpture babe?" I asked him. I was really interested. "Did you know her when you were at Whooton?"

"Hardly. She just arrived in this country a few months ago."

"She did? Where's she from?

"She happens to be from Shanghai."

"No kidding! She Chinese, for Chrissake?"

"Obviously."

"No kidding! Do you like that? Her being Chinese?"

"Obviously."

"Why? I'd be interested to know. I really would."

"I simply happen to find Eastern philosophy more satisfactory than Western. Since you ask."
"You do? Wuddaya mean 'philosophy'? Ya mean sex and all? You mean it's better in China? That what you mean?"

"Not necessarily in China, for God's sake. The East I said. Must we go on with this inane conversation?"

" Listen, I'm serious," I said. "No kidding. Why's it better in the East?"

"It's too involved to go into, for God's sake," old Luce said. "They simply happen to regard sex as both a physical and spiritual experience. If you think I'm -"

"So do I! So do I regard it was a wuddayacallit - a physical and spiritual experience and all. I really dop. But it depends on who the hell I'm doing it with. If I'm doing it with somebody I don't even-"

"Not so loud, for God's sake, Caulfield. If you can't manage to keep your voice down, let's drop the whole -"

"All right, but listen," I said. I was getting excited and I was talking too loud. Sometimes I talk a little loud when I get excited. "This is what I mean, though," I said. "I know it's supposed to be physical and spiritual and artistic and all. But what I mean is, you can't do it with everybody - every girl you neck with and all - and make it come out that way. Canyou?"

"Let's drop it," Old Luce said. "Do you mind?"

"All right, but listen. Take you and this Chinese babe. What's so good about you two?"

"Drop it, I said.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“What?" I said to old Phoebe. She said something me, but I didn't hear her.

"You can't even think of one thing."

"Yes, I can. Yes, I can."

"Well, do it, then."

"I like Allie," I said. "And I like doing what I'm doing right now. Sitting here with you, and talking, and thinking about stuff, and-"

"Allie's dead - You always say that! If somebody's dead and everything, and in Heaven, then it isn't really-"

"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."

Old Phoebe didn't say anything. When she can't think of anything to say, she doesn't say a goddam word.

"Anyway, I like it now," I said. "I mean right now. Sitting here with you and just chewing the fat and horsing -"

"That isn't anything really!"

"It is so something really! Certainly, it is. Why the hell isn't it? People never think anything is anything really, I'm getting goddam sick of it.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Old Phoebe said something then, but I couldn't hear her. She had the side of her mouth right smack on the pillow, and I couldn't hear her.

"What?" I said. "Take your mouth away. I can't hear you with your mouth that way."

"You don't like anything that's happening."

It made me even more depressed when she said that.

"Yes I do. Yes I do. Sure I do. Don't say that. Why the hell do you say that?"

"Becuase you don't. You don't like any schools. You don't like a million things. You don't."

"I do! That's where you're wrong - that's exactly where you're wrong! Why the hell do you have to say that?" I said. Boy, was she depressing me.

"Because you don't," she said. "Name one thing."

"One thing? One thing I like?" I said. "Okay."

The trouble was, I couldn't concentrate too hot. Sometimes it's hard to concentrate.

"One thing I like a lot you mean? I asked her.

She didn't answer me, though. She was in a cockeyed position way the hell over the other side of the bed. She was about a thousand miles away. "C'mon, answer me," I said. "One thing I like a lot, or one thing I just like?"

"You like a lot."

"All right," I said. But the trouble was, I couldn't concentrate.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“To Alys he had once said, “They will never take over and run my world.”

“You don’t have a world. You have an office.”

At that pointed he terminated the discussion.”
― Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said