J.D. Salinger Quotes: 32

• 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.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.

  Franny and Zooey

• I am always saying "Glad to've met you"to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• 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.

  Franny and Zooey

• when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you"right under your nose.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• 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 opera. It's terrible.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• 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.

  Franny and Zooey

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

  Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

• It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don't know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way.

  Franny and Zooey

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

  The Catcher in the Rye

• If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you"signs in the world. It's impossible.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• 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.

  Franny and Zooey

• I think that one of these days,"he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• who wants flowers when youre dead? nobody.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door."( A Boy in France : Saturday Evening Post CCXVII, March 31, 1945)

• It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. 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.

  The Catcher in the Rye

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

  The Catcher in the Rye

• 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.

  Nine Stories

• 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.

  Franny and Zooey

• 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.

  The Catcher in the Rye

• John Keats / John Keats / John / Please put your scarf on.

  Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

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

  The Catcher in the Rye

• 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.

  Franny and Zooey

• 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.

  The Catcher in the Rye