J.D. Salinger Quotes

Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.

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

One day a long time from now you'll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say about you. That's when you'll finally produce the work you're capable of.

Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.

I do not wear my emotions on my sleeve. I was once described by my own son Stephen as an emotional ostrich.

I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.

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

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

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.

He seemed unaware of the messiness of the arrangement.

The Gulf War is responsible for the huge and horrifying rise in Islamic terrorism.

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.

He had a theory, Walt did, that the religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

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.

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

I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.

I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.

The world is full of actors pretending to be human

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

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

If you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.

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.

The things that stand out are often the oddities.

The room was not impressively large, even by Manhattan apartment-house standards, but its accumulated furnishings might have lent a snug appearance to a banquet hall in Valhalla.

The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.

Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.

That's something that annoys the hell out of me-I mean if somebody says the coffee's all ready and it isn't.

People are always ruining things for you.

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

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

I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.

It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.

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?

I kept picturing all these little kids in this big field of rye... If they're running and they don't look where they're going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.

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.

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.

We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle.

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.

American people simply will not countenance being lied to by their own President.

I could happily lie down and die sometimes.

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.

Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.

You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.

Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.

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

Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.