"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect."
— J.D. Salinger

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. 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 do all day. 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 like to be."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy"
— J.D. Salinger

"Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them--if you want to. Just as someday, 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."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."
— J.D. Salinger

"The most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid."
— J.D. Salinger (Nine Stories)

"Mothers are all slightly insane."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible. "
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

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

"That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"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."
— J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
— J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

"When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don't know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way."
— J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

"Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"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. "
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"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.
"
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"...when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"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."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"I was trying to feel some kind of good-by. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t you feel even worse."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad."
— J.D. Salinger

"People are always ruining things for you."
— J.D. Salinger

". . . . I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. 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."
— J.D. Salinger

"If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would stll be on their way south, the deers would be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be YOU. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that exactly. You'd just be different that's all... I mean you'd be different in some way- I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it. -Holden"
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you' right under your nose."
— J.D. Salinger

"It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"Do you know who that fat lady is? Christ himself buddy, Christ himself."
— J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

"'This is a people shooting hat,' I said. 'I shoot people in this hat.'"
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to. -Holden Caulfield"
— J.D. Salinger

"Goddamn money. It always ends up making you blue as hell."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away. -Holden Caulfield"
— J.D. Salinger

"That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"This fall I think you're riding for--it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"I used to think she was quite intelligent , in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about all those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"People always clap for the wrong things. -Holden Caulfield"
— J.D. Salinger

"Sleep tight, ya morons!"
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

""Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, 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."
~Mr. Antolini"
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"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."
— J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any g****m stupid, useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. -Holden"
— J.D. Salinger

"It's a funny thing about girls. 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."
— J.D. Salinger

"If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of the writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one."
— J.D. Salinger (Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction)

"Then the carousel started, and I watched her go round and round...All the kids tried to grap for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she's fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say 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 is bad to say anything to them."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"But what I mean is, lots of time you don’t know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn’t interest you most. I mean you can’t help it sometimes."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"I love you to pieces, distraction, etc."
— J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)