J. D. Salinger Quotes

She was not one for emptying her face of expression.

Mothers are all slightly insane.

I always pick a gorgeous time to fall over a suitcase or something.

Our foyer has a funny smell that doesn't smell like anyplace else. I don't know what the hell it is....

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

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

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

A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn't stink a little bit of the writer'...

How do you know you're going to do something, untill you do it?

You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times o...

There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasio...

is he crazy?" --Harcourt-Brace editor on Holden Caulfield

I took her dress over to the closet and hung it up. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I...

Some guys spend days looking for something they lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost i...

I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they d...

... I was feeling so depressed I didn't even think. That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling ve...

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

Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?

God, how I still love private readers. It’s what we all used to be.

She gave me a pain in the ass, but she was very good looking.

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

All these handsome guys are the same. When they're done combing their goddam hair, they beat it on y...

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late?

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that ...

I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while, even if they'r...

I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourse...

All these angels start coming out of the boxes and everywhere, guys carrying crucifixes and stuff al...

I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay a...

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'...

I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it. I can't always pray when ...

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. T...

But I'm Crazy. I swear to God I am.

He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to ...

It was lousy in the park. It wasn't too cold, but the sun still wasn't out, and there didn't look li...

People always think something's all true. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored when people t...

I have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall. . . . The whole arrang...

I'm not trying to tell you," he said "that only educated men are able to contribute something valuab...

When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to ...

And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or s...

People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily,...,and he had very red hair.

I have a feeling that you're riding for some terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what...

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

I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?

I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really ...

The one that sang, old Janine, was always whispering into the g***** microphone before she sang. She...

Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Alli...

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

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

Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are... Sex is ...

These intellectual guys don't like to have an intellectual conversation with you unless they're runn...

That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look ...

But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written 'fuck you' on ...

When I really worry about something, I don´t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom whe...

Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell

People always think something's all true.

I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do l...

Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of thos...

I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they’re always being p...

In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw.

If you're not inthe mood, you can't do that stuff right.

You take a very handsome guy, or a guy that thinks he's a real hot-shot, and they're always asking y...

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

I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn ne...

You ought to go to a boy's school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all...

A story never ends. The narrator is usually provided with a nice, artistic spot for his voice to sto...

I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time ...

Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. - Holden Caulfield

One of the few things left in the world, aside from the world itself, that sadden me every day is an...

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

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

Probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. How well o...

I am a dash man and not a miler, and it is probable that I will never write a novel. So far the nove...

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

All mothers are slightly insane.

Most girls if you hold hands with them, their goddamn hand dies on you

This whole goddam house stinks of ghosts. I don’t mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I ...

I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute s...

She was around ten minutes late, as a matter of fact. I didn't give a damn, though. All that crap th...

Probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. How well o...

The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely ...

Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls wi...

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

Her sample drawings were clipped, rather subordinately, to her photograph. All of them were arrestin...

I purely came over because I thought you looked extremely lonely. You have an extremely sensitive fa...

He said you were the only one who was bitter about S.'s suicide and the only one who really forgave ...

As much as anything else, it was a stare, not so paradoxically, of a privacy-lover who, once his pri...

If you can't, or won't, think of Seymour, then you go right ahead and call in some ignorant psychoan...

He seemed unaware of the messiness of the arrangement.

We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of...

We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound.

I didn't want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies...

I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while—just once in a while—th...

I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get...

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

But I was afraid of the questions (much more than the accusations) you might both put to me.

Though we've talked and talked and talked, we've all agreed not to say a word.

We're freaks, the two of us, Franny and I. I'm a twenty-five-year-old freak and she's a twenty-one-y...

This whole goddamn house stinks of ghosts.

You don't know how to talk to people you don't like. Don't love, really. You can't live in the world...

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