Salinger Teddy Quotes & Sayings

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

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

You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. 'Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'
Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'
The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself. — J.D. Salinger

I've never seen such a bunch of apple-eaters. — J.D. Salinger

He was little more than halfway down the staircase when he heard an all-piercing, sustained scream
clearly coming from a small, female child. It was highly acoustical, as though it were reverberating within four tiled walls. — J.D. Salinger

After I go out this door, I may only exist in the minds of all my acquaintances ... I may be an orange peel. — J.D. Salinger

But doctors talk about cells as if they had such unlimited importance all by themselves. As if they didn't really belong to the person that has them." Teddy brushed back his hair from his forehead with one hand. "I grew my own body," he said. "Nobody else did it for me. So if I grew it, I must have known how to grow it. Unconsciously, at least. I may have lost the conscious knowledge of how to grow it sometime in the last few hundred thousand years, but the knowledge is still there, because - obviously - I've used it. — 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

Nothing in the voice of the cicada intimates how soon it will die. — J.D. Salinger

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

You know that apple Adam ate in the Garden of Eden, referred to in the Bible?' he asked. 'You know what was in that apple? Logic. Logic and intellectual stuff. That was all that was in it. So - this is my point - what you have to do is vomit it up if you want to see things as they really are ... '
The trouble is,' Teddy said, 'most people don't want to see things the way they are. They don't even want to stop getting born and dying all the time, instead of stopping and staying with God, where it's really nice.' He reflected. 'I never saw such a bunch of apple-eaters,' he said. He shook his head. — J.D. Salinger

I mean they don't seem able to love us just the way we are. They don't seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. — J.D. Salinger

I mean it's very hard to meditate and live a spiritual life in America. People think you're a freak if you try to. — J.D. Salinger

They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. It's not so good, that way. — J.D. Salinger