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86f735c
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You've got a goddamn bug today--you know that? What the hell's the matter with you anyway?" Franny quickly tipped her cigarette ash, then brought the ashtray an inch closer to her side of the table. "I'm sorry. I'm awful," she said. "I've just felt so destructive all week. It's awful. I'm horrible."
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J.D. Salinger |
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2213f16
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On top of everything else," he said immediately, "we've got 'Wise Child' complexes. We've never really got off the goddam air. Not one of us. We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound. At least I do . . . it's impossible for me to keep my mouth shut."
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J.D. Salinger |
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270919c
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I cut going there entirely, gradually.
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J.D. Salinger |
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78ddc7d
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If you've had a freakish education, at least use it, use it.
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J.D. Salinger |
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e04bb16
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I'm no goddam animal. I may be a stupid, fouled-up twentieth-century son of a bitch, but I'm no animal. Don't gimme that. I'm no animal.
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humanity
life
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J.D. Salinger |
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a9a8d25
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A lot of schools were home for vacation already, and there were about a million girls sitting and standing around waiting for their dates to show up. Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs, girls that looked like swell girls, girls that looked like they'd be bitches if you knew them. It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of de..
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J.D. Salinger |
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72134eb
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It's really hard to be roomates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs--if yours are the 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.
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J.D. Salinger |
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b3cc0ef
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Hava gunesliyse durum o kadar kotu sayilmazdi, ama bir iki kez -tam iki kez- biz mezarliktayken yagmur basladi. Korkunctu. Yagmur yagiyordu cocugun basindaki mezar tasina, karninin ustundeki cimlere. Her yer sirilsiklam olmustu. Mezarligi ziyarete gelen herkes deli gibi arabalarina kosmaya basladi. Iste bunu gorunce deli oluyordum neredeyse. Butun ziyaretciler arabalarina atlayip, radyolarini acabilirler, yemege bir yerlere gidebilirlerdi; ..
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J.D. Salinger |
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e4abe95
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Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game all right - I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it?
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J.D. Salinger |
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e1f4e82
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They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all-I'm not saying that-but they're also touchy as hell.
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J.D. Salinger |
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9ffd040
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Old Luce. He was strictly a pain in the ass, but he certainly had a good vocabulary. He had the largest vocabulary of any boy at Whooton when I was there. They gave us a test.
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J.D. Salinger |
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a3bed19
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It's the sort of absurd notion, though, that I wouldn't mind taking out for a good academic run someday.
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J.D. Salinger |
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4f410ca
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The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to've met each other. Which always kils me. I'm always saing '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.
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holden
the-catcher-in-the-rye
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J.D. Salinger |
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4a93d46
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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.
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J.D. Salinger |
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e7433e9
|
Y]ou're someone who took up birds in the first place because they fired your imagination; they fascinated you because 'they seemed of all created beings the nearest to pure spirit- those little creatures with a normal temperature of 125deg.
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J.D. Salinger |
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6739605
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For about a whole month, at least, whenever anybody said anything that sounded campusy or phony, or that smelled to high heaven of ego or something like that, I at least kept quiet about it. I went to the movies or I stayed in the library all hours or I started writing papers like made on Restoration edy and stuff like that--but at least I had the ure of not hearing my own voice for a while.
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J.D. Salinger |
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92df505
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My opinions are all too frequently too damn harsh for words.
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J.D. Salinger |
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1b0e73f
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He said he ate his food out of our big refrigerators, drove our eight-cylinder American cars, un-hesitatingly used our medicines when he was sick, and relied on the U.S. Army to protect his parents and sisters from Hitler's Germany, and nothing, not one single thing in all his poems, reflected these realities.
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J.D. Salinger |
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42d7e3d
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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?'
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J.D. Salinger |
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cb1978d
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One cannot even light a casual cigarette unless the artistic permission of the universe is freely given!
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J.D. Salinger |
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6778558
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I took a look out the window before I left the room, though, to see how all the perverts were doing, but they all had their shades down. They were the heighth of modesty in the morning.
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J.D. Salinger |
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b7956db
|
I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world...[however,] they have more humility than the scholarly thinker."
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J.D. Salinger |
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f48b756
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That was the worst. What happened was, I got the idea in my head - and I could not get it out - that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off th..
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J.D. Salinger |
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ccad04a
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What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.
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J.D. Salinger |
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3a2b4b3
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It means that every man, woman, and child over the age, let us say, of twentyone or thirty, at the very outside, should never do anything extremely important or crucial in their life without first consulting a list of persons in the world, living or dead, whom he loves.
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J.D. Salinger |
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3be493a
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My God, think of the opportunities and thrusts that lie ahead when one knows without a shred of doubt how commonplace and normal one is at heart!
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J.D. Salinger |
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4141d6f
|
But most of all, above everything else, who in the Bible besides Jesus knew - knew - that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?
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J.D. Salinger |
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100c19c
|
How do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't.
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J.D. Salinger |
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c1c5ce4
|
Mother, darling, don't yell at me. I can hear you beautifully," said the girl." --
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J.D. Salinger |
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f5c4b44
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Sometimes I talk a little loud when I get excited.
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J.D. Salinger |
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67fb9e0
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You're a very, very strange boy." "I know it", I said."
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J.D. Salinger |
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b27763d
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My lips were quivering slightly, like two fools. Ustnite mi potrepvakha kato dvama glupatsi.
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J.D. Salinger |
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7adc254
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But my parents, especially my mother, she has ears like a goddam bloodhound. So I took it very, very easy when I went past their door. I even held my breath, for God's sake. You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won't wake up, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she'll hear you.
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J.D. Salinger |
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30e257a
|
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.
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J.D. Salinger |
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dfcd871
|
You never get to sit next to the window any more when you're married.
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J.D. Salinger |
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14b2992
|
These intellectual guys don't like to have an intellectual conversation with you unless they're running the whole thing.
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unless
thing
intellectual
they-re
you
whole
guys
running
like
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J.D. Salinger |
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da77119
|
He didn't disagree with me, but he seemed to feel that I have a perfection complex of some kind. Much talk from him, and quite intelligent, on the virtues of living the imperfect life, of accepting one's own and others' weaknesses. I agree with him, but only in theory. I'll champion indiscrimination till doomsday, on the grounds that it leads to health and a kind of very real, enviable happiness. Followed purely it's the way of the Tao, and..
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J.D. Salinger |
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b2ec43c
|
You're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there.
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want
then
going
there
start
to
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J.D. Salinger |
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ea781e0
|
That's depressing, when somebody says "please" to you."
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says
somebody
please
you
to
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J.D. Salinger |
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23090c9
|
I'm in the unique position of being able to call my brother, straight out, a non-stop talker - which is a pretty vile thing to call somebody, I think - and yet at the same time to sit back, rather, I'm afraid, like a type with both sleeves full of aces, and effortlessly remember a whole legion of mitigating factors (and 'mitigating' is hardly the word for it). I can condense them all into one: By the time Seymour was in mid-adolescence - si..
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J.D. Salinger |
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99fb243
|
but I do very emphatically believe there is an enormous amount of the androgynous in any all-or-nothing prose writer, or even a would-be one. I think that if he titters at male writers who wear invisible skirts he does so at his eternal peril. I'll say no more on the subject. This is precisely the sort of confidence that can be easily and juicily Abused.
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J.D. Salinger |
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c45fad8
|
Samo ne mi se usmikhvai -- kaza Zui s raven glas i migom se ottegli. -- Siimor vse mi se usmikhvashe. Taia k'shcha e t'pkana s veseliatsi. "Just don't smile at me, please," Zooey said, evenly, and walked out of the vicinity. "Seymour was always doing that to me. This goddam house is lousy with smilers."
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J.D. Salinger |
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3b624a8
|
I know this much, is all," Franny said. "If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you're talking about don't leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there."
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J.D. Salinger |
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1819538
|
That's something else that gives me a royal pain. I mean if you're good at writing compositions and somebody starts talking about commas. Stradlater was always doing that. He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place.
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writing
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J.D. Salinger |