J. D. Salinger Quotes

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

Sex is something I really don't understand too hot.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.

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.

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?

Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly

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.

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.

Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.

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?

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

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

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.

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

I'm up to my ears in unwritten words.

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

You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not.

All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.