J. D. Salinger famous quotes

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.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Mean #Lovely #Missed You

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

#Sun #Sunny #Said

She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Reading #Together #Wedding Speech

I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I'm crazy. I swear to God I am.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Crazy #Lying #Said

A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn't stink a little bit of the writer's pride in having given up his pride.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Pride #Littles #Stink

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Literature #Want

Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Laughing

One day a long time from now you'll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say about you. That's when you'll finally produce the work you're capable of.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Long #One Day #Care

I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Hands #People #Touching

I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.
-- J. D. Salinger

#I Hate You #Mean #Not Sure

I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.
-- J. D. Salinger

#People #Liking Someone #Sick

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And 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 and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Hope #Running #Crazy

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.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Truth #Interesting #Sick

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.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Stupid #Mean #Thinking

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Reading #Book #Memorable

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.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Growing Up #Men #Immature

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.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Hate #Dresses #Looks

Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.
-- J. D. Salinger

#People #Literature #Suitcases

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Art #Writing #Perfection

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Hate #Moron

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Girl #Giving #Teenage Girl

I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Inspirational #Happiness #Happy

John Keats / John Keats / John / Please put your scarf on.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Scarves #Please

I privately say to you, old friend... please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).
-- J. D. Salinger

#Old Friends #Blooming #Bouquets

I love you to pieces, distraction, etc.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Inspiring #Love You #Pieces

I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all, Teddy said. It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was a tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.
-- J. D. Salinger

#God #Children #Drinking

Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead?
-- J. D. Salinger

#Death #Hope #Flower

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.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Crazy #Sun #Afternoon

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

#Hands #Worried

I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Important #Made

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.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Laughter #Stupid #Mean

If there is an amateur reader still left in the world—or anybody who just reads and runs—I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Running #Gratitude #Children

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

#Running

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

#Weather #Emotion #Poet

When I really worry about something, I don’t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don’t go. I’m too worried to go. I don’t want to interrupt my worrying to go.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Worry #Want #Fool

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

#Teacher #Want #Authority

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.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Happiness #Smart #Make You Happy

She was not one for emptying her face of expression.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Expression #Faces

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

#Paradise #Observation #Exclamation

Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly
-- J. D. Salinger

#Mind #Dresses #Measurement

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

#School #Crooks

Poets are always taking the weather so personally.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Clever #Weather #Poet

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

#Drunk #One Day #Blind

Franny was staring at the little blotch of sunshine with a special intensity, as if she were considering lying down in it.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Lying #Sunshine #Special

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Love #Life #Courage

I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Mean #Literature

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Artist #Unhappy #Would Be

Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Hate #Writing #Phony

I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Horse #Car #Literature

People never notice anything.
-- J. D. Salinger

#People

I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Literature #Illiterate

Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Funny #Memorable #Missing

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

#Fun #Stuff #Sometimes

That's something that annoys the hell out of me-I mean if somebody says the coffee's all ready and it isn't.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Coffee #Mean #Annoying

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Choices #Poet #Materials

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?
-- J. D. Salinger

#Mean #Scared #Feds

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.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Life #Happiness #Happy

I'm up to my ears in unwritten words.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Ears #Written Word

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

#Sun #Coming Out #Feels

I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Want

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

#People #Way #Firsts

Sleep tight, ya morons!
-- J. D. Salinger

#Goodbye #Sleep #Saying Goodbye

probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. how well or how badly the man actually knew the girl doesn’t necessarily affect the transformation. she was there, and she was the whole city, and that’s that
-- J. D. Salinger

#Girl #Men #Cities

You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Education #Teacher #Thinking

You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Lucky #World #Phenomenal

We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Distance #Circles #Two

I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Nice #Excited

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.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Friendship #Stuff #Alive

Mothers are all slightly insane.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Funny #Mom #Mother

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.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Watches #Showing Off

I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Coffee #Book #Doors

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. 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. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Beautiful #Confused #Mean

If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Player #Play #Piano

Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Kings #Stills

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?
-- J. D. Salinger

#Love You #Connections #Ends

Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Girl #Sorry #Real

She's quite intelligent, in my stupidity.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Intelligent #Stupidity

Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Writing #Heard #Euphemism

I wouldn't exactly describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out, though.
-- J. D. Salinger

#Beautiful