|
6dd4d26
|
You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion. Never. I'm a little over-excited now. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won't be asked. You won't be asked if you were working on a wonderful moving piece of writing w..
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
7d61f6d
|
Almost every damn school in the world gets out earlier for Christmas break than the school I go to.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
d109207
|
For a psychoanalyst to be any good... he'd have to believe that it was through the grace of God that he'd been inspired to study psychoanalysis in the first place.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
7b0e11c
|
He was the tallest, thinnest, weariest boy I had ever seen in my life. He was brilliant. He had gorgeous brown eyes, and he had only two suits. He was completely unhappy, and I didn't know why.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
f53c254
|
All these handsome guys are the same. When they're done combing their goddam hair, they beat it on you.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
74abc88
|
I submit that Zooey's face was close to being a wholly beautiful face. As such, it was of course vulnerable to the same variety of glibly undaunted and usually specious evaluations that any legitimate art object is. I think it just remains to be said that any one of a hundred everyday menaces -- a car accident, a head cold, a lie before breakfast -- could have disfigured or coarsened his bounteous good looks in a day or a second.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
3025e09
|
I got up and went over and looked out the window. I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
fd4b5f7
|
His date kept saying to him, "How horrible . . . Don't, darling. Please, don't. Not here." Imagine giving somebody a feel and telling them about a guy committing suicide at the same time! They killed me."
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
46daddd
|
Postponed pain is among the most abominable kind to experience.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
315cc9b
|
In my opinion, if you really want to know, half of the nastiness in the world is stirred up by people who aren't using their true egos.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
21ec304
|
I believe I essentially remain what I have always been--a narrator, but one with extremely pressing personal needs. I want to introduce, I want to describe, I want to distribute mementos, amulets, I want to break out my wallet and pass around snapshots, I want to follow my nose. In this mood I don't dare go anywhere near the shortstory form. It eats up little fat undetatched writers like me.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
75d2f12
|
Then I'd throw my automatic down the elevator shaft-after I'd wiped off all the fingerprints and all. Then I'd crawl back up to my room and call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was bleeding and all. The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding.
|
|
holden-caulfied
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
d5819a4
|
He said he was - this is exactly what he said - he said he was sitting at the table in the kitchen, all by himself, drinking a glass of ginger ale and eating sal and reading ' bey and Son', and all of a sudden Jesus sat down in the other chair and asked if he could have a small glass of ginger ale. A glass, mind you - that's exactly what he said. I mean he says things like that, and yet he thinks he's perfectly qualified to give a lot ..
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
cfcffdc
|
This is too grand to be said (so I'm just the man to say it), but I can't be my brother's brother for nothing, and I know - not always, but I know - there is no single thing I do that is more important than going into that awful Room 307. There isn't one girl in there, including the Terrible Miss Zabel, who is not as much my sister as Boo Boo or Franny. They may shine with the misinformation of the ages, but they shine. This thought manages..
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
debf739
|
When I'd checked into the bathroom with Seymour's diary under my arm, and had carefully secured the door behind me, I spotted a message almost immediately. It was not, however, in Seymour's handwriting but, unmistakably, in my sister Boo Boo's. With or without soap, her handwriting was always almost indecipherably minute, and she had easily managed to post the following message up on the mirror; 'Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like A..
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
5e3152b
|
I'm sorry, I'm awful, I've just felt so terribly destructive all week. It's awful. I'm horrible.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
9fd9d6e
|
She gave me a pain in the ass, but she was very good looking.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
7d75caa
|
I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age . sometimes I act a lot older than I am- I rally do - but people never notice it . people never notice anything.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
26b86a7
|
In New York, boy, money really talks - I'm not kidding.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
80066ac
|
I feel like someone in a terribly sophisticated play. The funny part is, I'm not sophisticated. I'm not anything. I'm just me.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
ef440f4
|
But fishing, as we know, in libraries or anywhere else, is a tricky business, with never a certainty of who's going to catch whom.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
4ac30ca
|
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? I think that knowledge - when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake, anyway - is the worst of all. The least..
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
5c8bed5
|
I say that the true artist seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own human conscience.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
ca98434
|
No odio a todos. Los odio unas cuantas horas o unos cuantos dias, pero despues se me pasa
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
2358bac
|
I'm one of the little foxes that spoil the grapes.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
95c8ef3
|
I've met the girl. She's a zero in my opinion but terrific-looking. I don't actually know that she's a zero. I mean she hardly said two words the night I met her. Just sat and smiled and smoked, so it isn't fair to say.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
632d257
|
All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she'd fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them. When the ride was over she got off her horse and came over to me. "You ride once..
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
6794d99
|
I went to my room and put some water on my hair, but you can't really comb a crew cut or anything. Then I tested to see if my breath stank from so many cigarettes and the Scotch and sodas I drank at Ernie's. All you do is hold your hand under your mouth and blow your breath up toward the old nostrils. It didn't seem to stink much, but I brushed my teeth anyway. Then I put on another clean shirt. I knew I didn't have to get all dolled up for..
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
6a25149
|
Nothing in the voice of the cicada intimates how soon it will die.
|
|
teddy
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
fcd5e92
|
You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. It's staggering how you jump straight the hell into the heart of a matter. I'm goosebumps all over... By God, you inspire me. You inflame me, Bessie. You know what you've done? Do you realize what you've done? You've given this whole goddam issue a fresh, new, Biblical slant. I wrote four papers in college on the Crucifixion--five, really--and every one of them worried me half crazy because ..
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
abbdae4
|
You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
95fbda5
|
TINA: Oh, Rick, Rick, I'm scared. What's happened to us? I can't seem to find us any more. I reach out and reach out and we're just not there. I'm frightened. I'm a frightened child (Looks out the window) I hate this rain. Sometimes I see me dead in it. RICK (quietly): My darling, isn't that a line from 'A Farewell To Arms'? TINA (turns, furious): Get out of here. Get out! Get out of here before I jump out of this window. Zooey took a parti..
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
4ac7753
|
Undoubtedly, though, what I'm really getting at is this: Since the bridegroom's permanent retirement from the scene, I haven't been able to think of anybody whom I'd care to send out to look for horses in his stead.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
347bcea
|
Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can't imagine. I started sweating like a bastard - my whole shirt and underwear and everything. Then I started doing something else. Every time I'd get to the end of a block I'd make believe I was talki..
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
bb7e624
|
Then I tried to get them in a little intelligent conversation, but it was practically impossible.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
7f98e46
|
People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily,...,and he had very red hair.
|
|
lies
red-hair
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
0532e8e
|
God, I wish you could've been there.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
e3c5563
|
People always clap for the wrong things.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
c83d79e
|
When I take my hand out of this blanket," he thought, "my nail will be grown back, my hands will be clean. My body will be clean. I'll have on clean shorts, clean undershirt, a white shirt. A blue polka-dot tie. A gray suit with a stripe, and I'll be home, and I'll bolt the door. I'll put some coffee on the stove, some records on the phonograph, and I'll bolt the door. I'll read my books and I'll drink coffee and I'll listen to music, and I..
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
44c0deb
|
I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
4366457
|
For joy, apparently, it was all Franny could do to hold the phone, even with both hands.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
99534ef
|
I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
6e87edd
|
Forgive the pessimism, if not the sonority. But I know how much you demand from a thing, you little bastard.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |
|
1b2b78e
|
He was rather like a Christmas tree whose lights, wired in series, must all go out if even one bulb is defective.
|
|
|
J.D. Salinger |