J. D. Salinger Quotations

I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

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

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

I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

How do you know you're going to do something, untill you do it?

I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.

I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty... you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.

I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.

I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.

Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart.

How long should a man's legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.

Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

He had a theory, Walt did, that the religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.

They didn't act like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to explain. They acted more like they knew they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good.

I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

Did you ever get fed up?' I said. 'I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something?

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

We have now reached the point where we are totally sure what we are saying is true.

Yes. That's it. That's the document. Where did you get it?

Why the hell don'tcha, instead of keep saying it?

To you everything thats happening in the world appears phony, to be something other than what it really is, right?

We don't want to get the Russians involved, but unless the U.S. government cooperates, we may have to.

Did you ever get fed up? I said. “I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something?

What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by, or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.

This fall I think you're riding for - it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with.

I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?

In the first place, you’re way off when you start railing at things and people instead of at yourself.

Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly

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.

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

If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable.

There are nice things in the world - and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked.

I'm aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in 'The Catcher In the Rye.' Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf out of their reach.

I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen. Sometimes, I act a lot older than I am--I really do. But people never notice it. People never notice anything.

... even the most sublimely accomplished non-stop talker can't consistently please.

In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw.

I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what kind.... It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. I just don't know.

Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.

Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away. Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it, though, the same week I made it - the same night, as a matter of fact.

I suspect that money is a far greater distraction for the artist than hunger.

Where do the ducks go in the winter?

You don't always have to get too sexy to get to know a girl.

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 know it's crazy.

That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.

oh, this happiness is strong stuff.

Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.

Do it for the fat lady!

There isn't anyone anywhere who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines. Give me an honest con man any day.

You think of the book you'd most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.

It happens to be one of those days when I see everybody in the family, including myself, through the wrong end of a telescope.

Tilting his head back he slowly released an enormous quantity of smoke from his mouth and drew it up through his nostrils. He continued to smoke in this "French-inhale" style. Very probably, it was not part of the sofa vaudeville of a showoff but, rather, the private, exposed achievement of a young man who, at one time or another, might have tried shaving himself left-handed.

She was there, and she was the whole city, and that’s that.

Zooey said... It would be very nice to come home and be in the wrong house. To eat dinner with the wrong people by mistake, sleep in the wrong bed by mistake, and kiss everybody good-bye in the morning thinking they were your own family.

We’re freaks, that’s all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that’s all. We’re the tattooed lady, and we’re never going to have a minute’s peace, the rest of our lives, until everybody else is tattooed, too.

If you're not in the mood, you can't do that stuff right.

Lane himself lit a cigarette as the train pulled in. Then, like so many people, who, perhaps, ought to be issued only a very probational pass to meet trains, he tried to empty his face of all expression that might quite simply, perhaps even beautifully, reveal how he felt about the arriving person. Franny was among the first of the girls to get off the train, from a car at the far, northern end of the platform. Lane spotted her immediately, and despite whatever it was he was trying to do with his face, his arm that shot up into the air was the whole truth.

After I go out this door, I may only exist in the minds of all my acquaintances…I may be an orange peel.

Sometimes you get tired of riding in taxicabs the same way you get tired riding in elevators. All of a sudden, you have to walk, no matter how far or how high up.

If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean, you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you're talking about don't leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there, but just because they do, just because they know how to leave something, it doesn't have to be a poem for heaven's sake. It may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings--excuse the expression. Like Manlius and Esposito and all those poor men.

...but don't tell me I'm not sensitive to beauty. That's my Achilles' heel, and don't you forget it. To me, everything is beautiful. Show me a pink sunset and I'm limp, by God...

I'd never yell, "Good luck!" at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.

I thought the two ugly ones were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could tell neither one of them wanted to look like the other one, and you couldn't blame them, but it was very amusing anyway.

The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding

the sentence im reading is terrific ...

I was surrounded by jerks. I'm not kidding.

God, I wish you could have been there.

Let's just try to have a marvelous time this weekend. I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible. Especially me. I love you.

Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?

Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a toilet seat.

You’d better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time You turn around. I know what I’m talking about. You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze In this goddam phenomenal world.

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?

You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won't wake up, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she'll hear you.

Then I’d throw my automatic down the elevator shaft-after I’d wiped off all the fingerprints and all. Then I’d crawl back up to my room and call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was bleeding and all. The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I’m not kidding.

How old are you? I asked her. "Old enough to know better." she said.

That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any.

I'd 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.

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first one who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior.

I feel overwhelmingly grateful to them, but I don't know what to do with their invisible gifts.

Then again you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.'

If Death stepped miraculously through the glass and came in after you, in all probability you just got up and went along with him, ferociously but quietly.

Girls. You never know what they're going to think.

Maybe there's a trapdoor under my chair, and I'll just disappear.

If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me.

I'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm doing is trying to protect myself and my work.

All mothers are slightly insane...

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.

I ignored the flashes of lightning all around me. They either had your number on them or they didn't.

I kept picturing all these little kids in this big field of rye... If they're running and they don't look where they're going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.

If I'd wanted this place to fill up with every fat Irish rose that passes by, I'd've said so.

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 clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.

The existence of God, the why of life, was all that really only a question of glands?