J.D. Salinger Quotes

I can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood.

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.

Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next.

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.

I was surrounded by phonies...They were coming in the goddam window.

if somebody at least listens it not too bad

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

Your heart, Bessie, is an autumn garage.

She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.

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

Yet a real artist, I've noticed, will survive anything. (Even praise, I happily suspect.)

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.

Each of his phrases was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey.

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

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.

who wants flowers when youre dead? nobody.

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

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.

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

I've never seen such a bunch of apple-eaters.

But I'm Crazy. I swear to God I am.

All mothers are slightly insane.

We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound.

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

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

It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his working years.

Give me an honest con man any day.

I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.

Where do the ducks go in the winter?

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

Just go to bed, now. Quickly. Quickly and slowly.

Liberate yourself from my vice-like grip!

Happiness is a solid and joy is a liquid.

Sometimes I see me dead in the rain.

Some people you shouldn't kid, even if they deserve it.

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

How that name comes up. Mixing memory and desire

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

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.

He was one of those guys that think they're being a pansy if they don't break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you. God I hate that stuff.

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

The catcher in the rye... that's all I really want to be.

I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I'd care too much about.

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?

People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it.

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.

If sentiment doesn't ultimately make fibbers of some people, their natural abominable memories almost certainly will.

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