Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.
I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.
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.
I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
Mothers are all slightly insane.
I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.
It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.
And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.
I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.
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.
People are always ruining things for you.
When you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.
All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
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.
If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late?
She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
People never notice anything.
People always clap for the wrong reasons.
And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.
I'm a kind of paranoiac 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.
If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more.
Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.
Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.
It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.
The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.
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.
Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.
I can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood.
I love you to pieces, distraction, etc.
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.
Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.
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.
I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.
Sleep tight, ya morons!
It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true.
Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row.
I don’t give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am - I really do - but people never notice it. People never notice anything.
I have scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me.
You don't know how to talk to people you don't like. Don't love, really. You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes.
It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.
This is a people shooting hat," I said. "I shoot people in this hat.
I don't even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it.
But what I mean is, lots of time you don’t know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn’t interest you most. I mean you can’t help it sometimes.
She was not one for emptying her face of expression.
You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.
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.
Who wants flowers when youre dead? nobody.
It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.
It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world.
If you weren't around, I'd probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some goddamn place. You're the only reason I'm around, practically.
That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.
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I privately say to you, old friend... please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).
Don't tell people what you are thinking, or you will miss them terribly when you are away.
If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable.
You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
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)
Sometimes I see me dead in the rain.
I wouldn't exactly describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out, though.
She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the light bulbs.
If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did.
I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of the writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.
But I'm Crazy. I swear to God I am.
Your heart, Bessie, is an autumn garage.
Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them-especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.
It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. 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.
I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life.
![[...] don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? ... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/j-d-salinger-23349.jpg)
[...] don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? ... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.
She wrote to him fairly regularly, from a paradise of triple exclamation points and inaccurate observations.
People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it.
Give me an honest con man any day.
That killed me.
Give me a story that just makes me unreasonably vigilant. Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason.
The connection was so bad, and I couldn’t talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back ‘What?
There are still a few men who love desperately.
I felt like I was sort of disappearing. It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing everytime you crossed a road.
In the first place, you’re way off when you start railing at things and people instead of at yourself.
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.
If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet.
My god, there's absolutely nothing tenth-rate about you, and yet you're up to your neck at this minute in tenth-rate thinking.
This is God's universe, buddy, not yours, and he has the final say about what's ego and what isn't.
I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.
I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.
I know. I'm very hard to talk to. I realize that.
The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding
I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway.
Where do the ducks go in the winter?
Oh, it's lovely to see you!' Franny said as the cab moved off. 'I've missed you.' The words were no sooner out than she realized that she didn't mean them at all.
I just hope that one day - preferably when we’re both blind drunk - we can talk about it.
Franny was staring at the little blotch of sunshine with a special intensity, as if she were considering lying down in it.
Bessie: 'Why don't you get married?' Zooey: 'I like riding in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window anymore when you're married.
Some people you shouldn't kid, even if they deserve it.
He said I was unequipped to meet life because I had no sense of humor.
Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly
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I live alone (but catless, I'd like everybody to know)....
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.
They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. It's not so good, that way.
She really started to cry, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over - anywhere - her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows, and all, her ears - her whole face except her mouth and all.
In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw.
