J.D. Salinger Quotes

She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

4015

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

4580

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.

4904

I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.

2714

It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true.

4212

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

4285

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

4266

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

4761

The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has - I'm not kidding.

4655

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

3535

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

3677

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.

1608

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.

2403

I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you.

4137

The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs-if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do.

3261

You asked me how to get out of the finite dimensions when I feel like it. I certainly don't use logic when I do it. Logic's the first thing you have to get rid of.

4058

And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.

4839

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

4888

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.

3470

I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while, even if they're only scratching their arms or blowing their noses or even just giggling or something.

1958

When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

4281

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.

2551

who wants flowers when youre dead? nobody.

1038

He said you were the only one who was bitter about S.'s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving.

3707

I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they’re always being perverty when I’m around.

1127

John Keats / John Keats / John / Please put your scarf on.

2218

You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.

4600

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.

4482

I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door."

( A Boy in France : Saturday Evening Post CCXVII, March 31, 1945)

4233

God bless ladies with costly, tasteful clothes and touching, dirty fingernails that champion gifted, foreign poets and decorate the library in beautiful, melancholy fashion! My God, this universe is nothing to snicker at!

4651

She gave me a pain in the ass, but she was very good looking.

1929

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

2573

God, how I still love private readers. It’s what we all used to be.

3709

While the consequences are often quite hellish, I am absolutely and perhaps permanently against ignoring books recommended from the heart by very nice people and strangers; it is too risky and inhuman; also the consequences are often painful in a fairly charming way.

3684

...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...

4474

God almighty, Franny," he said. "If you're going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis and Seymour and Heidi's grandfather all wrapped up in one. Keep him in mind if you say it, and him only, and him as he was and not as you'd like him to have been.

3970

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.

3190

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

4499

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.

3143

If German boys had learned to be contemptuous of violence, Hitler would have had to take up knitting to keep his ego warm.

1390

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

4121

I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human consciousness.

1665

- Be', proprio così, -insistette. - Perché non ti sposi?
Abbandonando la sua posizione, Zooey prese dalla tasca posteriore dei calzoni un fazzoletto piegato, [...] e disse: - Mi piace troppo viaggiare in treno. Quando sei sposato non puoi più sederti vicino l finestrino.

1357

Postponed pain is among the most abominable kind to experience.

3559

We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle.

4476

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

4674

Look at 'em,' he said. 'Goddam fools.' 'Who?' said Ginnie. 'I don't know. Anybody.

4710

I'm no goddam animal. I may be a stupid, fouled-up twentieth-century son of a bitch, but I'm no animal. Don't gimme that. I'm no animal.

3018

That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may "think" there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write, "Fuck you" right under your nose.

2046

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.

1514

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.

4156

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.

2417

Phoebe'ye "Little Shirley Beans" adlı plağı almak istiyordum. Çok zor bulunan bir plaktı. Plak, iki ön dişi düştüğü için çok utandığından evinden dışarı çıkmayan küçük bir kız çocuğu hakkındaydı.

3085

Basketbol takımındakiler birbirlerini tutuyor, Katolikler birbirlerini tutuyor, lanet entellektüeller birbirlerini tutuyor, Ayın Kitabı Kulübüne üye olan herifler bile birbirlerini tutuyor.

3998

Her neyse, atom bombasını keşfettiklerine çok memnunum bir bakıma. Yeni bir savaş olursa, gider bombanın tepesine otururum. Bunun için gönüllü giderim, yemin ediyorum.

1733

Derdi ki, dünyadaki evli erkeklerin yarısı homoymuş, ama kendileri bile öyle olduklarını bilmezlermiş. Eğer eğiliminiz varsa, bir gece içinde homo olabilirmişsiniz. Felaket korkuturdu bizi. Homo olacakmıyım acaba diye dertlenir dururdum.

4373

Tenis üzerine sizinle konuşmak filan, çocuğun çok hoşuna gidiyordu, ama anlıyordunuz, bir de Katolik olsaydınız çok daha hoşuna gidecekti.

3100

O rahibeleri bu yüzden sevmiştim. Anlıyordunuz, her seyden önce, onlar hiç bir zaman öyle şatafatlı yerlerde yemek yemezlerdi. Onların hiç bir zaman şatafatlı bir yerde yemeğe gitmediklerini düşününce felaket üzüldüm.

2425

Bu iki rahibenin bana Katolik olup olmadığımı sormadıklarına bu nedenle memnun olmuştum. Sorsalardı, konuşmamız berbat olmazdı, ama ben de herhalde farklı davranırdım.

1597

Katolikler, soyadınızı bilmeseler de, Katolik olup olmadığınızı anlamaya çalışırlar hep.

3630

I still think that, in a way, I can't get past half my childhood dogmas.

2873