J.D. Salinger

“I have scars on my hand from touching certain people. Once, in the park, when Frannie was still in the carriage, I put my hand on the downy pate of her head and left it there too long. Another time, at Loew's Seventy-second Street, with Zooey during a spooky movie. He was about six or seven, and he went under the seat to avoid watching a scary scene. I put my hand on his head. Certain heads, certain colors and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me. Other things, too. Charlotte once ran away from me, outside the studio, and I grabbed her dress to stop her, to keep her near me. A yellow cotton dress I loved because it was too long for her. I still have a lemon-yellow mark on the palm of my right hand.”

“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.”

“...her self-imposed sentence of unadulterated good-listenership had been fully served.”

“If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it. I'm sorry I told so many people about it. About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about.[...] It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

“D.B. asked me what I thought about all this stuff I just finished telling you about. I didn't know what the hell to say. If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it. I'm sorry I told so many people about it. All I know about it is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddam Maurice. It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

“I'm one of the little foxes that spoil the grapes.”

“The rest of us, he said, we are outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving.”

“Forgive the pessimism, if not the sonority. But I know how much you demand from a thing, you little bastard.”

“Lawyers are alright, I guess — but it doesn't appeal to me", I said. "I mean they're alright if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn't.”

“...publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write.”

“Los que de verdad me vuelven loco son esos libros que cuando acabas de leerlos piensas que ojalá el autor fuera amigo tuyo y pudieras llamarle por teléfono cuando quisieras.”

“I went to my room and put some water on my hair, but you can't really comb a crew cut or anything. Then I tested to see if my breath stank from so many cigarettes and the Scotch and sodas I drank at Ernie's. All you do is hold your hand under your mouth and blow your breath up toward the old nostrils. It didn't seem to stink much, but I brushed my teeth anyway. Then I put on another clean shirt. I knew I didn't have to get all dolled up for a prostitute or anything, but it sort of gave me something to do. I was a little nervous. I was starting to feel pretty sexy and all, but I was a little nervous anyway. If you want to know the truth, I'm a virgin. I really am. I've had quite a few opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I've never got around to it yet. Something always happens. For instance, if you're at a girl's house, her parents always come home at the wrong time – or you're afraid they will. Or if you're in the back seat of somebody's car, there's always somebody's date in the front seat – some girl, I mean – that always wants to know what's going on all over the whole goddam car. I mean some girl in front keeps turning around to see what the hell's going on. Anyway, something always happens. I came quite close to doing it a couple of times, though. One time in particular, I remember. Something went wrong, though – I don't even remember what any more. The thing is, most of the time when you're coming pretty close to doing it with a girl – a girl that isn't a prostitute or anything, I mean – she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don't. I can't help it. You never know whether they really want you to stop, or whether they're just scared as hell, or whether they're just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame'll be on you not them. Anyway, I keep stopping. The trouble is, I get to feeling sorry for them. 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. I don't know. They tell me to stop, so I stop. I always wish I hadn't, after I take them home, but I keep doing it anyway.”

“He didn't disagree with me, but he seemed to feel that I have a perfection complex of some kind. Much talk from him, and quite intelligent, on the virtues of living the imperfect life, of accepting one's own and others' weaknesses. I agree with him, but only in theory. I'll champion indiscrimination till doomsday, on the grounds that it leads to health and a kind of very real, enviable happiness. Followed purely it's the way of the Tao, and undoubtedly the highest way. But for a discriminating man to achieve this, it would mean that he would have to dispossess himself of poetry, go beyond poetry. That is, he couldn't possibly learn or drive himself to like bad poetry in the abstract, let alone equate it with good poetry. He would have to drop poetry altogether. I said it would be no easy thing to do. Dr Sims said I was putting it too stringently – putting it, he said, as only a perfectionist would.”

“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.”

“You know what the trouble with me is? I can never get really sexy―I mean really sexy―with a girl I don't like a lot. I mean I have to like her a lot. If I don't, I sort of lose my goddam desire for her and all.”

“After I go out this door, I may only exist in the minds of all my acquaintances. I may be an orange peel.”

“Everybody just thinks things keep stopping off somewhere. They don't...The reason things seem to stop off somewhere is because that's the only way most people know how to look at things. But that doesn't mean they do.”

“I ignored the flashes of lightning all around me. They either had your number on them or they didn't.”

“I just hope that one day - preferably when we’re both blind drunk - we can talk about it.”

“I knew her like a book. I really did. I mean, besides checkers, she was quite fond of all athletic sports, and after I got to know her, the whole summer long we played tennis together almost every morning and golf almost every afternoon. I really got to know her quite intimately. I don't mean it was anything physical or anything―it wasn't―but we saw each other all the time. You don't always have to get too sexy to get to know a girl.”

“The thing is, though, I don't like the idea. It stinks, if you analyze it. 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.”

“La gente ya está meneando la cabeza a mi alrededor, y si vuelvo a utilizar profesionalmente la palabra "Dios" en un futuro inmediato, no siendo como una sana y común exclamación americana, ello será considerado -o más bien, confirmado- como la peor clase de presunción y un signo inequívoco de que voy derecho a mi perdición.”

“(He) looked directly into his own eyes, as though his eyes were neutral territory, a no man’s land in a private war against narcissism.”

“I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible, especially me.”

“All these handsome guys are the same. When they're done combing their goddam hair, they beat it on you.”

“Sicché andò a finire che feci il tema sul guantone da baseball di mio fratello Allie. […] Mio fratello Allie, dunque aveva quel guantone da prenditore, il sinistro. Lui era mancino. La cosa descrittiva di quel guanto, però, era che c’erano scritte delle poesie su tutte le dita e il palmo e dappertutto. In inchiostro verde. Ce le aveva scritte lui, così aveva qualcosa da leggere quando stava ad asp...ettare e nessuno batteva. Ora è morto. Gli è venuta la leucemia ed è morto quando stavamo nel Maine, il 18 luglio del 1946. Vi sarebbe piaciuto. Aveva due anni meno di me, ma era cinquanta volte più intelligente di me. Era di un’intelligenza fantastica. […] Aveva solo tredici anni e loro volevano farmi psicanalizzare e compagnia bella perché avevo spaccato tutte le finestre del garage. Non posso biasimarli. Ho dormito nel garage la notte che lui è morto, e ho spaccato col pugno tutte quelle dannate finestre, così, tanto per farlo. Ho tentato anche di spaccare tutti i finestrini della giardinetta che avevamo quell’estate, ma a quel punto mi ero già rotto la mano eccetera eccetera, e non ho potuto. È stata una cosa proprio stupida, chi lo nega, ma io quasi non sapevo nemmeno quello che stavo facendo, e poi voi non conoscevate Allie.”

“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.”

“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.”

“«Mais tu ferais mieux de t’y mettre tout de suite, ma fille. On a à peine le temps de faire un mouvement que le sablier est déjà vide, tu sais. Crois-moi, je sais de quoi je parle. Tu auras eu de la veine si tu trouves le temps d’éternuer dans ce monde incroyable.»”

“Why are you breaking down, incidentally? I mean if you’re able to go into a collapse with all your might, why can’t you use the same energy to stay well and busy?”

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

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

“Oh, Romeo and Juliet! Lovely! Didn’t you just love it?”She certainly didn’t sound like a nun. “Yes. I did. I liked it a lot. There were a few things I didn`t like about it, but it was quite moving, on the whole.”“What didn`t you like abut it? Can you remember?”To tell you the truth, it was sort of embarrassing, in a way, to be talking about Romeo and Juliet with her. I mean that play gets pretty sexy in some parts, and she was a nun and all, but she asked me, so I discussed it with her for a while. “Well, I`m not too crazy about Romeo and Juliet,”I said. “I mean I like them, but – I don’t know. They get pretty annoying sometimes. I mean I felt much sorrier when old Mercutio got killed then when Romeo and Juliet did. The thing is, I never liked Romeo too much after Mercutio gets stabbed by that other man – Juliet’s cousin – what’s his name?”(The Catcher in The Rye, p. 111).”

“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.”

“I'm the one flunking out of this goddam place, and you're asking me to write you a goddam composition.”

“I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.”

“She gave me a pain in the ass, but she was very good looking.”

“Los poetas se toman siempre el tiempo tan a pecho. Siempre están metiendo sus emociones en cosas que no tienen ninguna emoción.”

“In New York, boy, money really talks - I’m not kidding.”

“I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of trying to make me happy”

“Just because I'm choosy about what I want - in this case, enlightenment, or peace, instead of money or prestige or fame or any of those things - doesn't mean I'm not as egotistical and self-seeking as everybody else.”

“Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.”

“That’s a deer shooting hat.''Like hell it is.' I took it off and looked at it. I sort of closed one eye, like I was taking aim at it. 'This is a people shooting hat,' I said. 'I shoot people in this hat.”

“Laf aramızda, sen neden sinir krizi geçiriyorsun acaba? yani, bütün gücün kuvvetinle çöküntüye uğrayabiliyorsan eğer, neden aynı enerjiyi sapasağlam ayakta kalmak için harcamıyorsun?”

“I got the idea in my head - and I could not get it out - that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven’s sake. What’s the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? I think that knowledge - when it’s knowledge for knowledge’s sake, anyway - is the worst of all. The least excusable certainly. I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while - just once in a while - there was some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is!”

“I feel overwhelmingly grateful to them, but I don't know what to do with their invisible gifts.”

“All I know is I’m losing my mind,” Franny said. “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 – it is, it is. I don’t care what anybody says.”

“There isn't anyone anywhere who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.”

“My father wrote beautifully,” Esmé interrupted. “I’m saving a number of his letters for posterity.”I said that sounded like a very good idea. I happened to be looking at her enormous-faced, chrono-graphic-looking wristwatch again. I asked if it had belonged to her father.She looked down at her wrist solemnly. “Yes, it did,” she said. “He gave it to me just before Charles and I were evacuated.” Self-consciously, she took her hand off the table, saying, “Purely as a momento, of course.” She guided the conversation in a different direction. “I’d be extremely flattered if you’d write a story exclusively for me sometime. I’m an avid reader.”I told her I certainly would, if I could. I said that I wasn’t terribly prolific.“It doesn’t have to be terribly prolific! Just so that isn’t childish and silly.” She reflected. “I prefer stories about squalor.”“About what?” I said, leaning forward.“Squalor. I’m extremely interested in squalor.”

“They're just people that write poems that get published and anthologized all over the place but they're not poets.”