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27d54f2
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Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
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death
j-d-salinger
holden-caulfield
flowers
wry-humor
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J.D. Salinger |
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9194f16
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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 depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them. When they got out of school and college, I mean. You figured most..
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J.D. Salinger |
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c5a507f
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I know. I'm very hard to talk to. I realize that.
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J.D. Salinger |
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6ead1ed
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Every time you mention some guy that's strictly a bastard-- very mean, or very conceited and all-- and when you mention it to the girl, she'll tell you he has an inferiority complex. Maybe he has, but that still doesn't keep him from being a bastard, in my opinion.
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J.D. Salinger |
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cc7fb94
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I do like him. I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.... .... Listen, don't hate me because I can't remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else." Franny made her voice stop. It sounded to her caviling and bitchy, and she felt a wave of self-hatred that, quite literally, made her forehead begin to perspire again. ..
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J.D. Salinger |
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e8974a5
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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. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.
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holden
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J.D. Salinger |
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223d1b9
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Give me an honest con man any day.
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J.D. Salinger |
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0a37d57
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Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.
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J.D. Salinger |
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5f3824f
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Against my better judgment I feel certain that somewhere very near here--the first house down the road, maybe--there's a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here somebody's having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight.
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J.D. Salinger |
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cca7a2c
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I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life.
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J.D. Salinger |
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f7341d2
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Give me a story that just makes me unreasonably vigilant. Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason.
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J.D. Salinger |
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755490b
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She wrote to him fairly regularly, from a paradise of triple exclamation points and inaccurate observations.
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J.D. Salinger |
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03a29ca
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Where do the ducks go in the winter?
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J.D. Salinger |
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e29c1d6
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The connection was so bad, and I couldn't talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back 'What?
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J.D. Salinger |
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cee56ba
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Listen, I don't care what you say about my race, creed, or religion, Fatty, but don't tell me I'm not sensitive to beauty. That's my Achilles' heel, and don't you forget it. To me, everything is beautiful. Show me a pink sunset, and I'm limp, by God. Anything. Peter Pan. Even before the curtain goes up at Peter Pan I'm a goddamn puddle of tears.
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J.D. Salinger |
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7b54523
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If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet.
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J.D. Salinger |
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16ad8df
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But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written 'fuck you' on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them-- all cockeyed naturally-- what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to ..
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innocence
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J.D. Salinger |
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021fa01
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Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason...Oh dare to do it Buddy! Trust your heart. You're a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I'm feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I'd give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.
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angsty
inspirational
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J.D. Salinger |
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ad7e525
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I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.
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J.D. Salinger |
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2f41b95
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The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding
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J.D. Salinger |
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35c858c
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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.
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philosophy
teddy
meditation
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J.D. Salinger |
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72328a6
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In the first place, you're way off when you start railing at things and people instead of at yourself.
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J.D. Salinger |
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14090be
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Bessie: 'Why don't you get married?' Zooey: 'I like riding in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window anymore when you're married.
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J.D. Salinger |
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286c3fe
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Do you know what I was smiling at? 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.
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J.D. Salinger |
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22c4a3e
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Written in ink, in German, in a small, hopelessly sincere handwriting, were the words "Dear God, life is hell." Nothing led up to or away from it. Alone on the page, and in the sickly stillness of the room, the words appeared to have the stature of an uncontestable, even classic indictment. X stared at the page for several minutes, trying, against heavy odds, not to be taken in. Then, with far more zeal than he had done anything in weeks, h..
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J.D. Salinger |
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ab1f7be
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Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them-especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.
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J.D. Salinger |
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9ad3abe
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I felt like I was sort of disappearing. It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing everytime you crossed a road.
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J.D. Salinger |
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7eef910
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My god, there's absolutely nothing tenth-rate about you, and yet you're up to your neck at this minute in tenth-rate thinking.
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J.D. Salinger |
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8c38c50
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This is God's universe, buddy, not yours, and he has the final say about what's ego and what isn't.
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J.D. Salinger |
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1cbdff5
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She worries over the way her love for me comes and goes, appears and disappears. She doubts its reality simply because it isn't as steadily pleasurable as a kitten. God knows it is sad. The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on earth.
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J.D. Salinger |
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8e61b36
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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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fb4b741
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Oh, it's lovely to see you!' Franny said as the cab moved off. 'I've missed you.' The words were no sooner out than she realized that she didn't mean them at all.
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J.D. Salinger |
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4c5bd6f
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But guilt is guilt. It doesn't go away. It can't be nullified. It can't even be fully understood, I'm certain - it's roots run too deep into private and long-standing karma. About the only thing that saves my neck when I get to feeling this way is that guilt is an imperfect form of knowledge. Just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean that it can't be used. The hard thing to do is to put it to practical use, before it gets around to paralyz..
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J.D. Salinger |
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88b1099
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If only you'd remember before ever you sit down to write that you've been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart's choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing ..
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J.D. Salinger |
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7d5cdf0
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I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.
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J.D. Salinger |
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e3e8bd3
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Franny was staring at the little blotch of sunshine with a special intensity, as if she were considering lying down in it.
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J.D. Salinger |
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678e0c0
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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.
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suicide
family
death
forgiveness
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J.D. Salinger |
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2100e01
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Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first one who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior.
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J.D. Salinger |
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83b711c
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The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it.
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J.D. Salinger |
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e6f360e
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He said I was unequipped to meet life because I had no sense of humor.
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J.D. Salinger |
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0f821c5
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I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it. I can't always pray when I feel like it. In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much ..
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praying
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J.D. Salinger |
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9262e90
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She really started to cry, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over - anywhere - her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows, and all, her ears - her whole face except her mouth and all.
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J.D. Salinger |
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315ebe1
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Lawyers are alright, I guess -- but it doesn't appeal to me", I said. "I mean they're alright if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did ..
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holden-caulfield
the-catcher-in-the-rye
phonies
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J.D. Salinger |
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0839679
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I live alone (but catless, I'd like everybody to know)....
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J.D. Salinger |