J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” Quotes (97 Quotes)

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.

Liberate yourself from my vice-like grip!

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.

Where do the ducks go in the winter?

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

I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all… I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye

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.

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

That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.

Women kill me. They really do. I don't mean I'm oversexed or anything like that-although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They're always leaving their goddam bags out in the middle of the aisle.

Every time you mention some guy that's strictly a bastard- very mean, or very conceited and all- and when you mention it to the girl, she'll tell you he has an inferiority complex. Maybe he has, but that still doesn't keep him from being a bastard, in my opinion.

I knew a lot of guys at Pencey I thought were a lot handsomer than Stradlater, but they wouldn't look handsome if you saw their pictures in the Year Book. They'd look like they had big noses or their ears stuck out.

I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen

Lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most.

That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.

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.

Finally, though, I'd leave the room without even taking a sock at him. I'd probably go down to the can and sneak a cigarette and watch myself getting tough in the mirror. Anyway, that's what I thought about the whole way back to the hotel. It's no fun to be yellow. Maybe I'm not all yellow. I don't know. i think maybe I'm just partly yellow and partly the type that doesn't give much of a damn if they lose their gloves.

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

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.

My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. he was left handed. The thing that was descriptive about it though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up to bat

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

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

Get your dirty stinking moron knees off my chest.

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

I'm the one flunking out of this goddam place, and you're asking me to write you a goddam composition.

Oh, I don't know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don't know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all.

That's what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It mad me so damn sad when I thought about it, their never going anywhere swanky for lunch or anything. I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway.

You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys. Guys that talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that are very mean. Guys that never read books.

God, I wish you could have been there.

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.

In every school I've gone to, all the athletic bastards stick together.

People always clap for the wrong reasons.

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

You keep 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. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education, it's history.

All these handsome guys are the same. When they're done combing their goddam hair, they beat it on you.

He always had to know who was going. I swear, if that guy was shipwrecked somewhere, and you rescued him in the god damn boat, he'd want to know who the guy that was rowing it before he'd even get in.

I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.

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

People always think something's all true.

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

You remember I said before that Ackley was a slob in his personal habits? Well, so was Stradlater, but in a different way. Stradlater was more of a secret slob. He always looked all right, Stradlater, but for instance, you should've seen the razor he shaved himself with. It was always rusty as hell and full of lather and hairs and crap. He never cleaned it or anything. He always looked good when he was finished fixing himself up, but he was a secret slob anyway, if you knew him the way I did

Almost every damn school in the world gets out earlier for Christmas break than the school I go to.

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.

I said old Jesus probably would've puked if He could see it - all those fancy costumes and all. Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am. The thing Jesus really would've liked would be the guy who plays the kettle drums in the orchestra.

In New York, boy, money really talks - I'm not kidding.

People are always ruining things for you.

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