110+ J. D. Salinger Quotes On Writing, Introspective And Wry

J. D. Salinger was an American novelist, best known for his 1951 novel, The Catcher in the Rye. He was a reclusive author, publishing only a few works between 1951 and 1965, but his works remain popular and widely read. His works are known for their exploration of teenage angst and alienation, and his characters are often seen as precursors to the modern-day "anti-hero". Following is our collection on famous quotes by J. D. Salinger on love, life, writing.

Top 10 J. D. Salinger Quotes

1. Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.
2. She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
3. Sex is something I really don't understand too hot.
4. I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.
5. I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
6. And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.
7. It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.
8. The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.
9. 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.
10. 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 Image Quotes

And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight. — J. D. Salinger

J. D. Salinger Short Quotes

• All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
• Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
• I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.
• You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
• The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has — I'm not kidding.
• Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly
• If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.
• Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.
• I'm up to my ears in unwritten words.
• Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes.

J. D. Salinger Quotes About Love

Hell is the suffering of being unable to love. — J. D. Salinger

I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty... you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. — J. D. Salinger

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. — J. D. Salinger

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

If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable. — J. D. Salinger

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

Let's just try to have a marvelous time this weekend. I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible. Especially me. I love you. — J. D. Salinger

Sentimentality is loving something more than God does. — J. D. Salinger

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

There are still a few men who love desperately. — J. D. Salinger

J. D. Salinger Quotes About Life

He had a theory, Walt did, that the religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world. — J. D. Salinger

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 is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules. — J. D. Salinger

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. — J. D. Salinger

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. — J. D. Salinger

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. — J. D. Salinger

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. — J. D. Salinger

I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life. — J. D. Salinger

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

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

J. D. Salinger Quotes About Writing

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

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

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. — J. D. Salinger

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

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

Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? — J. D. Salinger

I love to write and I assure you I write regularly... But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it. — J. D. Salinger

There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure. — J. D. Salinger

You think of the book you'd most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it. — J. D. Salinger

J. D. Salinger Quotes About People

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

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

But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair. — J. D. Salinger

It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true. — J. D. Salinger

People always clap for the wrong reasons. — J. D. Salinger

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

You know, I'm the only one in this family who has no problems, . . . And you know why? Because any time I'm feeling blue, or puzzled , what I do, I just invite a few people to come visit me in the bathroom, and--well, we iron things out together, that's all. — J. D. Salinger

People never notice anything. — J. D. Salinger

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

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. — J. D. Salinger

J. D. Salinger Quotes About World

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. — J. D. Salinger

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

There isn’t a nightclub in the world that you can sit in for a long time unless you can at least buy some liquor and get drunk. Or unless you’re with some girl that really knocks you out. — J. D. Salinger

The world is full of actors pretending to be human — J. D. Salinger

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

There's a marvelous peace in not publishing, there's a stillness. When you publish, the world thinks you owe something. If you don't publish, they don't know what you're doing. You can keep it for yourself. — J. D. Salinger

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. — J. D. Salinger

You’d better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time You turn around. I know what I’m talking about. You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze In this goddam phenomenal world. — J. D. Salinger

You can't exist in this world with such strong likes and dislikes. — J. D. Salinger

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

J. D. Salinger Quotes About Acted

They didn't act like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to explain. They acted more like they knew they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good. — J. D. Salinger

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

I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do — J. D. Salinger

J. D. Salinger Famous Quotes And Sayings

And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight. — J. D. Salinger

What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would've done it, too, if I'd been sure somebody'd cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn't want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory. — J. D. Salinger

The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything. — J. D. Salinger

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

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

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. — J. D. Salinger

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

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. — J. D. Salinger

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

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

I kept picturing all these little kids in this big field of rye... If they're running and they don't look where they're going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. — J. D. Salinger

Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew--knew--that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? — J. D. Salinger

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

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

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

Against my better judgment I feel certain that somewhere very near here—the first house down the road, maybe—there's a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here somebody's having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight. — J. D. Salinger

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. — J. D. Salinger

I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. — J. D. Salinger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — J. D. Salinger

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

Money always ends up making you blue. — J. D. Salinger

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. — J. D. Salinger

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

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

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. — J. D. Salinger

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

Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way—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'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. — J. D. Salinger

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

I don't know about bores. Maybe you shouldn't feel too sorry if you see some swell girl getting married to them. They don't hurt anybody most of them, and maybe they're all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me. — J. D. Salinger

If a body catch a body coming through the rye. — J. D. Salinger

I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes. — J. D. Salinger

Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines. Give me an honest con man any day. — J. D. Salinger

I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead. — J. D. Salinger

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

His icebergs are strange monuments with a symbol embodied in their form and their colours. They do not freeze you when you look at them, for they are not of ice, they are what Lawren Harris feels and thinks after he has contemplated them — J. D. Salinger

I was trying to feel some kind of good-bye. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t you feel even worse. — J. D. Salinger

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. — J. D. Salinger

I mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them losing their brains. You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn't any brains. -Holden Caulfield — J. D. Salinger

Bessie: 'Why don't you get married?' Zooey: 'I like riding in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window anymore when you're married. — J. D. Salinger

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

It's so silly. All you do is get the heck out of your body when you die. My gosh, everybody's done it thousands of times. Just because they don't remember, it doesn't mean they haven't done it. — J. D. Salinger

Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad. — J. D. Salinger

Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a toilet seat. — J. D. Salinger

Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right - I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game. — J. D. Salinger

She was wearing a canary-yellow two-piece bathing suit, one piece of which she would not actually be needing for another nine or ten years. — J. D. Salinger

Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has - I'm not kidding. — J. D. Salinger

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

Girls. You never know what they're going to think. — J. D. Salinger

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. — J. D. Salinger

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. — J. D. Salinger

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

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. — J. D. Salinger

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

If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me. — J. D. Salinger

It's one of those places that are supposed to be very sophisticated and all, and the phonies are coming in the window. — J. D. Salinger

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

Life Lessons by J. D. Salinger

1. J.D. Salinger's work emphasizes the importance of self-reflection and introspection, and encourages readers to look within themselves to find their own truth.
2. His characters often struggle with the complexities of life and the difficulties of growing up, and his stories illustrate the power of resilience and the beauty of human connection.
3. Salinger's work is a reminder to cherish life's simple moments and to find joy in the everyday.