J.D. Salinger Quotes

Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes.

She was not one for emptying her face of expression.

Mothers are all slightly insane.

I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.

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?

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

I'm up to my ears in unwritten words.

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.

You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

She wrote to him fairly regularly, from a paradise of triple exclamation points and inaccurate observations.

Why's it so sunny?" she repeated. Zooey observed her rather narrowly. "I bring the sun wherever I go, buddy," he said.

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

Money always ends up making you blue.

Sleep tight, ya morons!

I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do

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.

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

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.

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.

I don't suppose a writing man ever really gets rid of his old crocus-yellow neckties. Sooner or later, I think, they show up in his prose, and there isn't a hell of a lot he can do about it.

It isn't very serious, I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.

I love you to pieces, distraction, etc.

I just hope that one day - preferably when we’re both blind drunk - we can talk about it.

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

Don't hate me because I can't remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else.

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.

Listen, if you're not going to be a nun or something, you might as well laugh.

Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.

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.

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

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.

It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.

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

It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.

I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway.

I don't even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it.

I have scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me.

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

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

I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.

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.

One of the problems with a candidate like Bob Kennedy, and his brother before him, was that people assumed they didn't need contributions.

I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.

If a body catch a body coming through the rye.

People are mostly hot to have a discussion when you're not.

I’m not going to bed after all. Somebody around here hath murdered sleep. Good for him.

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

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

Don't tell people what you are thinking, or you will miss them terribly when you are away.

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.