J.D. Salinger Quotes (158 Quotes)

I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life.

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.

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

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.

I love you to pieces, distraction, etc.

She was not one for emptying her face of expression.

Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was, in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces, a stunning and final girl.

Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.

He stuck around till around dinnertime, talking about all the guys at Pencey that he hated their guts, and squeezing this big pimple on his chin. He didn't even use a handkerchief. I don't even think the bastard had a handkerchief, if you want to know the truth. I never saw him use one, anyway.

I thought the two ugly ones were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could tell neither one of them wanted to look like the other one, and you couldn't blame them, but it was very amusing anyway.

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.

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

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.

I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible, especially me.

Sometimes I see me dead in the rain.

How that name comes up. Mixing memory and desire

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.

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

It didn't exactly depress me to think about it, but it didn't make me feel gay as hell either. Certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but its too bad anyways.

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

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

I submit that Zooey's face was close to being a wholly beautiful face. As such, it was of course vulnerable to the same variety of glibly undaunted and usually specious evaluations that any legitimate art object is. I think it just remains to be said that any one of a hundred everyday menaces - a car accident, a head cold, a lie before breakfast - could have disfigured or coarsened his bounteous good looks in a day or a second.

The color of his pallor, however, was a curiously basic white - unmixed, that is, with the greens and yellows of guilt or abject contrition. It was very like the standard bloodlessness in the face of a small boy who loves animals to distraction, all animals, and who has just seen his favourite, bunny-loving sister's expression as she opened the box containing his birthday present to her - a freshly caught young cobra, with a red ribbon tied in an awkward bow around its neck.

I mean it's very hard to meditate and live a spiritual life in America. People think you're a freak if you try to.

Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row.

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

I took a look out the window before I left the room, though, to see how all the perverts were doing, but they all had their shades down. They were the heighth of modesty in the morning.

It ends up with everybody at this long dinner table laughing their asses off because the great Dane comes in with a bunch of puppies. Everybody thought it was a male , I suppose, or some goddam thing. All I can say is, don't see it if you don't want to puke all over yourself.

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

The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it.

Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.

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.

The rest, with very little exaggeration, was books. Meant-to-be-picked-up books. Permanently-left-behind books. Uncertain-what-to-do-with books. But books, books. Tall cases lined three walls of the room, filled to and beyond capacity. The overflow had been piled in stacks on the floor. There was little space left for walking, and none whatever for pacing.

I mean they don't seem able to love us just the way we are. They don't seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more.

Boy, did he depress me! I don't mean he was a bad guy- he wasn't. But you don't have to be bad guy to depress somebody- you can be a good guy and do it.

I cut going there entirely, gradually.

I was surrounded by jerks. I'm not kidding.

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

Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a toilet seat.

Then I'd throw my automatic down the elevator shaft-after I'd wiped off all the fingerprints and all. Then I'd crawl back up to my room and call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was bleeding and all. The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding.

Anyway, I started bitching one night before the broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady.

If I'd wanted this place to fill up with every fat Irish rose that passes by, I'd've said so.

The room was not impressively large, even by Manhattan apartment-house standards, but its accumulated furnishings might have lent a snug appearance to a banquet hall in Valhalla.

I prayed for the city to be cleared of people, for the gift of being alone-a-l-o-n-e: which is the one New York prayer that rarely gets lost or delayed in channels, and in no time at all everything I touched turned to solid loneliness.