J.D. Salinger Quotes & Sayings

An Aesthetic Saint — J.D. Salinger

Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad. — J.D. Salinger

Teddy looked at him directly for the first time.
Are you a poet?' he asked.
A poet?' Nicholson said. 'Lord, no. Alas, no. Why do you ask?'
I don't know. Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.' "
- Teddy and Nicholson in "Teddy" (Nine Stories) — J.D. Salinger

People never believe you. — J.D. Salinger

You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn't any brains. — J.D. Salinger

Oh, I don't know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don't know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all. — J.D. Salinger

I never really knew anything about friendship before I was in the Army. Did you Vince?"
"Not a thing. It's the best thing there is. Just About. — J.D. Salinger

I thought you told me Jimmy Jimmereeeno was run over and killed."
"What?"
"You heard me," Eloise said. "Why are you sleeping way over here?"
"Because," said Ramona.
"Because why? Ramona, I don't feel like
"
"Because I don't want to hurt Mickey."
"Who?"
"Mickey," said Ramona, rubbing her nose. "Mickey Mickeranno. — J.D. Salinger

In my opinion, if you really want to know, half of the nastiness in the world is stirred up by people who aren't using their true egos. — J.D. Salinger

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. — J.D. Salinger

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

The thing is, it's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs
if yours are really good ones and theirs aren't. You think if they're intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don't give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do. They really do. — J.D. Salinger

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. — J.D. Salinger

You asked me how to get out of the finite dimensions when I feel like it. I certainly don't use logic when I do it. Logic's the first thing you have to get rid of. — J.D. Salinger

A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn't stink a little bit of the writer's pride in having given up his pride. — J.D. Salinger

I'm aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf, out of their reach. — J.D. Salinger

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. -Holden Caulfield — J.D. Salinger

Probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. How well or how badly the man actually knew the girl doesn't necessarily affect the transformation. She was there, and she was the whole city, and that's that. — J.D. Salinger

Yes, I have an ulcer, for Chrissake. This is Kaliyuga, buddy, the Iron Age. Anybody over sixteen without an ulcer's a goddam spy. — J.D. Salinger

Some guys spend days looking for something they lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I'd care too much. — J.D. Salinger

I am a dash man and not a miler, and it is probable that I will never write a novel. So far the novels of this war have had too much of the strength, maturity and craftsmanship critics are looking for, and too little of the glorious imperfections which teeter and fall off the best minds. The men who have been in this war deserve some sort of trembling melody rendered without embarrassment or regret. I'll watch for that book. — J.D. Salinger

I get lonesome up there," I told him. "I picked a lousy profession. If I ever write a novel I think I'll join a choir or something and run to meetings between chapters. — J.D. Salinger

My god, there's absolutely nothing tenth-rate about you, and yet you're up to your neck at this minute in tenth-rate thinking. — J.D. Salinger

The world is full of actors pretending to be human — J.D. Salinger

Eight dollars and eighty-five cents. Sixty-five cents. I spent some. — J.D. Salinger

The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. — J.D. Salinger

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. — J.D. Salinger

Lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most. — J.D. Salinger

I'll tell you what kind of red hair he had. I started playing golf when I was only ten years old. I remember once, the summer I was around twelve, teeing off and all, and having a hunch that if I turned around all of a sudden, I'd see Allie. So I did, and sure enough, he was sitting on his bike outside the fence
there was this fence that went all around the course
and he was sitting there, about a hundred and fifty yards behind me, watching me tee off. That's the kind of red hair he had. — J.D. Salinger

I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all, Teddy said. It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was a tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean. — J.D. Salinger

That's depressing, when somebody says "please" to you. — J.D. Salinger

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. — J.D. Salinger

She doesn't like her own room because it's too little, she says. She says she likes to spread out. That kills me. What's old Phoebe got to spread out? Nothing. — J.D. Salinger

Once, at one of the very rare and savory moments when my own teammates grudgingly allowed me to take the ball around one of the ends, Seymour, playing for the opposite side, disconcerted me by looking overjoyed to see me as I charged in his direction, as though it were an unexpected, an enormously providential chance encounter. I stopped almost dead short, and someone, of course, brought me down, in neighborhood talk, like a ton of bricks. — J.D. Salinger

God, I wish you could've been there. — J.D. Salinger

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. — J.D. Salinger

I'd be the catcher in the rye and all. — J.D. Salinger

It makes me so depressed I go crazy. — J.D. Salinger

She gave me the big freeze when I said hello that day, though. I had a helluva time convincing her that I didn't give a good goddam where her dog relieved himself. He could do it in the living room, for all I cared. — J.D. Salinger

I remember a little dispersed band of unfamiliar faces that surreptitiously turned around, now and then, to see who was coughing. — J.D. Salinger

All these angels start coming out of the boxes and everywhere, guys carrying crucifixes and stuff all over the place, and the whole bunch of them - thousands of them - singing "Come All Ye Faithful" like mad. Big deal. It's supposed to be religious as hell, I know, and very pretty and all, but I can't see anything religious or pretty, for God's sake, about a bunch of actors carrying crucifixes all over the stage. When they all finished and started going out the boxes again, you could tell they could hardly wait to get a cigarette of something. I saw it with old Sally Hayes the year before, and she kept saying how beautiful it was, the costumes and all. I said old jesus probably would've puked if he could see it. — J.D. Salinger

God, could that dopey girl dance. Buddy Singer and his stinking band was playing 'Just One of Those Things' and even they couldn't ruin it entirely. It's a swell song. I didn't try any trick stuff while we danced
I hate a guy that does a lot of show-off tricky stuff on the dance floor
but I was moving her around plenty, and she stayed with me. The funny thing is, I thought she was enjoying it, too, till all of a sudden she came out with this very dumb remark. "I and my girl friends saw Peter Lorre last night," she said. "The movie actor. In person. He was buyin' a newspaper. He's cute."
"You're lucky," I told her. "You're really lucky. You know that?" She was really a moron. But what a dancer. — J.D. Salinger

Franny was staring at the little blotch of sunshine with a special intensity, as if she were considering lying down in it. — J.D. Salinger

Hi,' he said. He always said it like he was terrifically bored or terrifically tired. He didn't want you to think he was visiting you or anything. He wanted you to think he'd come in by mistake, for God's sake. — J.D. Salinger

I'm not trying to tell you," he said "that only educated men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so.
But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with
which, unfortunately, is rarely the case
tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are MEREly brilliant and creative. — J.D. Salinger

They make everything they touch turn absolutely academic and useless. To my mind, They're mostly to blame for the mob of ignorant oafs with diplomas that are turned loose on the country every June. — J.D. Salinger

Could you try not aiming so much?" he asked me, still standing there. "If you hit him when you aim, it'll just be luck." He was speaking, communicating, and yet not breaking the spell. I then broke it. Quite deliberately. "How can it be luck if I aim?" I said back to him, not loud (despite the italics) but with rather more irritation in my voice than I was actually feeling. He didn't say anything for a moment but simply stood balanced on the curb, looking at me, I knew imperfectly, with love. "Because it will be," he said. "You'll be glad if you hit his marble - Ira's marble - won't you? Won't you be glad? And if you're glad when you hit somebody's marble, then you sort of secretly didn't expect too much to do it. So there'd have to be some luck in it, there'd have to be slightly quite a lot of accident in it. — J.D. Salinger

A few years before, it had taken her three days to dispose of the Easter chick she had found dead on the sawdust in the bottom of her wastebasket. — J.D. Salinger

He said you were the only one who was bitter about S.'s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving. — J.D. Salinger

I was surrounded by jerks. I'm not kidding. — J.D. Salinger

Though we've talked and talked and talked, we've all agreed not to say a word. — J.D. Salinger

You ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the Catholics stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that
belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together. — J.D. Salinger

You'd better get busy, though, buddy. The goddamn sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I'm talking about. You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddamn phenomenal world. {...} I used to worry about that. I don't worry about it very much any more. At least I'm still in love with Yorick's skull. At least I always have time enough to stay in love with Yorick's skull. I want an honorable goddamn skull when I'm dead, buddy. I hanker after an honorable goddamn skull like Yorick's. — J.D. Salinger

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

You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers. — J.D. Salinger

I was trying to feel some kind of good-bye. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't you feel even worse. — J.D. Salinger

I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen — J.D. Salinger

But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with - which, unfortunately, is rarely the case - tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. — J.D. Salinger

I'm sick to death of being the heavy in everybody's life. — J.D. Salinger

It was the last game of the year and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win. — J.D. Salinger

How'd she happen to mention me? Does she do to B.M. now? She said she might go there. she said she might go to Shipley, too. I thought she went to Shipley. how'd she happen to mention me?"
- Personally after reading chapters 1-5 and learning about Jane and Holden's relationship as friends or just to people you can tell that obviously he does truly care about this girl. To make situations between Holden and Stradlater I see jealousy come with in the mix when a date between "Strad" and jane come up to holden during one of there normal horsing around moods — J.D. Salinger

I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. — J.D. Salinger

It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his working years. — J.D. Salinger

The one ugly one, Laverne, wasn't too bad a dancer, but the other one, old Marty, was murder. Old Marty was like dragging the Statue of Liberty around the floor. — J.D. Salinger

If sentiment doesn't ultimately make fibbers of some people, their natural abominable memories almost certainly will. — J.D. Salinger

I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. — J.D. Salinger

I don't care if it's a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. — J.D. Salinger

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. — J.D. Salinger

It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it. — J.D. Salinger

Lane was speaking now as someone does who has been monopolizing conversation for a good quarter of an hour or so and who believes he has just hit a stride where his voice can do absolutely no wrong. — 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. — J.D. Salinger

He could hear me alright ... but he didn't answer me right away. He was the kind of guy that hates to answer you right away. — J.D. Salinger

I went down by a different staircase, and i saw another "fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "fuck you" signs in the world. — J.D. Salinger

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

But her arms were probably the best of her. They were brown and round and good. — J.D. Salinger

The little girl on the plane Who turned her doll's head around To look at me. — J.D. Salinger

If you can't, or won't, think of Seymour, then you go right ahead and call in some ignorant psychoanalyst. You just do that. You just call in some analyst who's experienced in adjusting people to the joys of television, and Life magazine every Wednesday, and European travel, and the H-bomb, and Presidential elections, and the front page of the Times, and God knows what else that's gloriously normal. — J.D. Salinger

Don't tell people what you are thinking, or you will miss them terribly when you are away. — J.D. Salinger

People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it. — J.D. Salinger

People never notice anything. — J.D. Salinger

If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable. — J.D. Salinger

The funny part is, I felt like marrying her the minute I saw her. I'm crazy. I didn't even like her much, and yet all of a sudden I felt like I was in love with her and wanted to marry her. I swear to God I'm crazy. I admit it. — J.D. Salinger

Look at 'em,' he said. 'Goddam fools.' 'Who?' said Ginnie. 'I don't know. Anybody. — J.D. Salinger

Without the mind, sensuality quite has no organs to call her own! — J.D. Salinger

Aunt
Uh
There's a war on. Uh
I mean you've seen it on the newsreels. I mean you've heard it on the radio and all, haven't you? — J.D. Salinger

The hole in the shoulder of his T shirt was not a cute hole. The excess material in the seat of his seersucker shorts, the excess length of the shorts themselves, were not cute excesses. — J.D. Salinger

Something happens, and the words get synchronized with the person's heartbeats, and then you're actually praying without ceasing ... — J.D. Salinger

The thing he was afraid of, he was afraid somebody'd say something smarter than he had. — J.D. Salinger

What gets me about D.B., though, he hated the war so much, and yet he got me to read this book A Farewell to Arms last summer. He said it was so terrific. That's what I can't understand. It had this guy in it named Lieutenant Henry that was supposed to be a nice guy and all. I don't see how D.B. could hate the Army and war and all so much and still like a phony like that. I mean, for instance, I don't see how he could like a phony like that and still like that one by Ring Lardner, or that other one he's so crazy about, The Great Gatsby. D.B. got sore when I said that, and said I was too young and all to appreciate it, but I don't think so. I told him I liked Ring Lardner and The Great Gatsby and all. I did, too. I was crazy about The Great Gatsby. Old Gatsby. Old sport. That killed me. — J.D. Salinger

Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. 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, and nobody'd ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can't imagine. — J.D. Salinger

He was one of those guys that think they're being a pansy if they don't break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you. God I hate that stuff. — J.D. Salinger

Some people you shouldn't kid, even if they deserve it. — J.D. Salinger

I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I'd care too much about. — J.D. Salinger

She had a nice voice. A nice telephone voice, mostly. She should've carried a goddamn telephone around with her. — J.D. Salinger

Without keeping up a merciless guard, day and night, the variety of forward opinions in this world could easily destroy one's sanity. — J.D. Salinger

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. — J.D. Salinger

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. — J.D. Salinger

For example, when Seymour told one of the twins or Zooey or Franny or even Mme. Boo Boo (who was only two years younger than myself, and often entirely the Lady), to take off his or her galoshes on coming into the apartment, each and all of them knew he mostly meant that the floor would get tracked up if they didn't and that Bessie would have to get out the mop. When I told them to take off their galoshes, they knew I mostly meant that people who didn't were slobs. It was bound to make no small difference in the way they kidded or ragged us separately. — J.D. Salinger

Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions. — J.D. Salinger

If he didn't have a cigar to hold on to, his feet would leave the ground. We'd never see out Zooey again. — J.D. Salinger