Quotes by J.D. Salinger

“Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.”

“Look at 'em,' he said. 'Goddam fools.' 'Who?' said Ginnie. 'I don't know. Anybody.”

“I think it should be done over, Buddy. Please make peace with your wit. It's not going to go away, Buddy. To dump it on your own advice would be as bad and unnatural as dumping your adjectives and ...”

“I still think that, in a way, I can't get past half my childhood dogmas.”

“Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?”

“Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was, in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces, a stunning and final girl.”

“Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”

“Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are... Sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God.”

“You ought to go to a boy's 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 Cadil...”

“You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.”

“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. ”

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

“This fall I think you're riding forit's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arr...”

“I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anyb...”

“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 t...”

“An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.”

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

“God, how I still love private readers. Its what we all used to be. ”

“God almighty, Franny," he said. "If you're going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis and Seymour and Heidi's grandfather all wrapped up in one. Keep him in min...”

“I have a feeling that youre riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall. . . . The whole arrangements designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something thei...”