“If you're not inthe mood, you can't do that stuff right.”

“She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”

“And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.”

“I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”

“I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy.”

“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the ope...”

“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the ope...”

“is he crazy?" --Harcourt-Brace editor on Holden Caulfield”

“And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.”

“Worry is like a rocking-chair. It gives you something to do buy gets you nowhere.”

“But if that was going to happen, it was going to happen whether or not he worried about it.”

“Perhaps the greatest worry of all was that one day you would realize that all the worries of your life amounted to one thing: the desire to just stop worrying.”