J. D. Salinger Quotes
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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.
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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.
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The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on Earth.
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I ignored the flashes of lightning all around me. They either had your number on them or they didn't.
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I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.
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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.
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I like to ride in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window anymore when you're married.
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I'd swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet.
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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? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff.
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I'm just interested in finding out what the hell goes. I mean do you have to be a goddam bohemian type, or dead, for Chrissake, to be a real poet? What do you want - some bastard with wavy hair?
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She's quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny. I watched her once from the window when she was crossing over Fifth Avenue to go to the park, and that's what she is, roller-skate skinny. You'd like her.
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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.
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What I think is, you're supposed to leave somebody alone if he's at least being interesting and he's getting all excited about something. I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.
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There are nice things in the world - and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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What is it but a low form of prayer when he or Les or anybody else God-damns everything? I can't believe God recognizes any form of blasphemy. It's a prissy word invented by the clergy.
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He said I was unequipped to meet life because I had no sense of humor.
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I didn't want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck.
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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.
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And the old horror of being a professional writer, and the usual stench of words that goes with it, is begining to drive me out of my seat. (Buddy)
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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.
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The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect, than facts even usually do.