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Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.
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I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.
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I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.
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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.
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If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.
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I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.
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I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.
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Life is a gift horse in my opinion.
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The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.
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There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.
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The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.
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Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.
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I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.
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I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
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It naturally follows that the creature you love next best is the person - the God-lover or God-hater (almost never, apparently, anything in between), the saint or profligate, moralist or complete immoralist - who can write a poem that is a poem.
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Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules. - Mr. Spencer
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I asked him what, if anything, got him down about teaching. He said he didn't think that anything about it got him exactly down, but there was one thing, he thought, that frightened him: reading the pencilled notations in the margins of books in the college library.
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Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next.
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People never notice anything.
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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.
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I don't necessarily intend to publish posthumously, but I do like to write for myself.
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It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.
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There's no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It's all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.
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People never believe you.