J.D. Salinger

“[Y]ou’re someone who took up birds in the first place because they fired your imagination; they fascinated you because ‘they seemed of all created beings the nearest to pure spirit- those little creatures with a normal temperature of 125°.”

“This whole goddam house stinks of ghosts. I don’t mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one.”

“Dont's ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everyone- Holden Caulfield”

“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.”

“You're a student - whether the idea appeals to you or not. You're in love with knowledge.”

“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?”

“I've never seen such a bunch of apple-eaters.”

“No me atrevo acercarme a la forma del cuento corto. A los pequeños escritores gordos y subjetivos como yo, se los come vivos.”

“Si el sentimiento, en última instancia, no vuelve mentirosa a alguna gente, los abominables recuerdos seguro que sí”

“Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.”

“if somebody at least listens it not too bad”

“We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound.”

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

“After I shut the door and stared back to the living room, he yelled something at me, but I couldn't exactly hear him. I'm pretty sure he yelled 'Good luck!' at me. I hope not. I hope to hell not. I'd never yell 'Good luck' at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.”

“This whole goddamn house stinks of ghosts.”

“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.”

“We’re freaks, that’s all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that’s all. We’re the tattooed lady, and we’re never going to have a minute’s peace, the rest of our lives, until everybody else is tattooed, too.”

“It happens to be one of those days when I see everybody in the family, including myself, through the wrong end of a telescope.”

“Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can't imagine. I started sweating like a bastard – my whole shirt and underwear and everything. Then I started doing something else. Every time I'd get to the end of a block I'd make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I'd say to him, "Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Please, Allie." And then when I'd reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I'd thank him.”

“It started embarrassing me. I began to feel like such a nasty little egomaniac." She reflected. "I don't know. It seemed like such poor taste, sort of, to want to act in the first place. I mean all the ego. And I used to hate myself so, when I was in a play, to be backstage after the play was over. All those egos running around feeling terribly charitable and warm. Kissing everybody and wearing their makeup all over the place, and then trying to be horribly natural and friendly when your friends came backstage to see you. I just hated myself.”

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

“You’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. It’s staggering how you jump straight the hell into the heart of a matter. I’m goosebumps all over… By God, you inspire me. You inflame me, Bessie. You know what you’ve done? Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve given this whole goddam issue a fresh, new, Biblical slant. I wrote four papers in college on the Crucifixion—five, really—and every one of them worried me half crazy because I thought something was missing. Now I know what it was. Now it’s clear to me. I see Christ in an entirely different light. His unhealthy fanaticism. His rudeness to those nice, sane, conservative, tax-paying Pharisees. Oh, this is exciting! In your simple, straightforward bigoted way, Bessie, you’ve sounded the missing keynote of the whole New Testament. Improper diet. Christ lived on cheeseburgers and Cokes. For all we know he probably fed the mult—”

“Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. - Holden Caulfield”

“No importa que la sensación sea triste o hasta desagradable, pero cuando me voy de un sitio me gusta darme cuenta de que me marcho. Si no luego me da más pena todavía.”

“You're a real prince. You're a gentleman and a scholar, kid.”

“They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn't funny. I 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.”

“I said I thought she had a very fine voice.She nodded. 'I know. I'm going to be a professional singer.''Really? Opera?''Heavens, no. I'm going to sing jazz on the radio and make heaps of money. Then, when I'm thirty, I shall retire and live on a ranch in Ohio.”

“No cuenten nunca nada a nadie. En el momento en que uno cuenta cualquier cosa, empieza a echar de menos a todo el mundo.”

“¿Cómo sabe uno lo que va a hacer hasta que llega el momento? Es imposible. Yo creo que sí, pero, ¿cómo puedo saberlo con seguridad?”

“¡Dios mío! ¡Cómo me fastidia que me digan «Buena suerte» cuando me voy de alguna parte! Es de lo más deprimente”

“No odio a todos. Los odio unas cuantas horas o unos cuantos días, pero después se me pasa”

“[...] Eso es lo que me gustaría hacer todo el tiempo. Vigilarlos. Yo sería el guardián entre el centeno.”

“People always think something's all true. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am, I really do. But people never notice. People never notice anything.”

“¿Quién necesita flores cuando ya se ha muerto? Nadie.”

“Si la chica es guapa, ¿a quién le importa que llegue tarde? Cuando aparece se le olvida a uno en seguida.”

“It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'Its a secret between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business ofice, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer.”

“A veces hago cosas de persona mayor, en serio, pero de eso nadie se da cuenta. La gente nunca se da cuenta de nada.”

“An instant later, a silk hat materialised in the air beside me, considerably down and to the left, and my special, only technically unassigned cohort grinned up at me - for a moment, I rather thought he was going to slip his hand into mine.”

“…he is invariably a kind of super-size but unmistakably ‘classical’ neurotic, an aberrant who only occasionally, and never deeply, wishes to surrender his aberration; or, in English, a Sick Man who not at all seldom, though he’s reported to childishly deny it, gives out terrible cries of pain, as if he would wholeheartedly let go of both his art and soul to experience what passes in other people for wellness, and yet (the rumor continues) when his unsalutary-looking little room is broken into and someone - not infrequently, at that, someone who actually loves him - passionately asks him where the pain is, he either declines or seems unable to discuss it an any constructive critical length, and in the morning, when even great poets and painters presumably feel a bit more chipper than usual, he looks more perversely determined than ever to see his sickness run its course, as though by the light of another, presumably working day he had remembered that all men, the healthy ones included, eventually die, but that he, lucky man, is at least being done in by the most stimulating companion, disease or no, he has ever known.”

“The's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner-- everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wish he wasn't there. You didn't know him. If you'd known him, you'd know what I mean. It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.”

“Hava güneşliyse durum o kadar kötü sayılmazdı, ama bir iki kez -tam iki kez- biz mezarlıktayken yağmur başladı. Korkunçtu. Yağmur yağıyordu çocuğun başındaki mezar taşına, karnının üstündeki çimlere. Her ter sırılsıklam olmuştu. Mezarlığı ziyarete gelen herkes deli gibi arabalarına koşmaya başladı. İşte bunu görünce deli oluyordum neredeyse. Bütün ziyaretçiler arabalarına atlayıp, radyolarını açabilirler, yemeğe bir yerlere gidebilirlerdi. Buna dayanamamıştım.”

“It's the sort of absurd notion, though, that I wouldn't mind taking out for a good academic run someday.”

“I privately say to you old friend (unto you, really, I'm afraid), please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parenthesis: (((( )))). I suppose, most unflorally, I truly mean them to be taken, first off as bow-legged--buckle-legged--omens of my state of mind and body at this writing.”

“I believe I essentially remain what I have always been--a narrator, but one with extremely pressing personal needs. I want to introduce, I want to describe, I want to distribute mementos, amulets, I want to break out my wallet and pass around snapshots, I want to follow my nose. In this mood I don't dare go anywhere near the shortstory form. It eats up little fat undetatched writers like me.”

“She's an irritating, opinionated woman, a type Buddy can't stand. I don't think he could see her for what she is. A person, deprived, for life, of any understanding or taste for the main current of poetry that flows through things, all things.”

“You don't always have to get too sexy to get to know a girl.”

“It didn't exactly depress me to think about it, but it didn't make me feel gay as hell either. Certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but its too bad anyways.”

“I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.”

“I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school.”

“I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone . . . I'd cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I'd meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we'd get married. She'd come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a piece of paper, like everybody else”