"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)

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

"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)

"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

"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

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

"I'm 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. -Holden"
— J.D. SalingerSalinger

"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

"People never notice anything.- Holden Caulfield"
— J.D. Salinger

"Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will. -Holden Caulfield"
— J.D. Salinger

"I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. "
— J.D. Salinger

"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 all 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 kill whoever'd written it. -Holden"
— J.D. Salinger

"People always think something's all true- Holden Caulfield"
— J.D. Salinger

"If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did. -Holden"
— J.D. Salinger

"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. -Holden"
— J.D. Salinger

"When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice - twice - we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner - everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wished he wasn't there. -Holden Caulfield"
— J.D. Salinger

"I don't hate too many guys. What I may do, I may hate them for a little while, like this guy Stradlater I knew at Pencey, and this other boy, Robert Ackley. I hate them once in a while- I admit it- but it doesn't last too long, is what I mean. After a while, if I didn't see them, if they didn't come in the room, or if I didn't see them in the dining room for a couple of meals, I sort of missed them. I mean I sort of missed them. -Holden"
— J.D. Salinger

"People never think anything is anything REALLY. I'm getting gosh damn sick of it. -Holden"
— J.D. Salinger

"It was as cold as a witch's teat in December."
— Salinger, J. D.

""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, Chapter 22, spoken by the character Holden Caulfield
"
— J.D. Salinger

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the autor that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it."
— J.D. Salinger

"All morons hate it when you call them a moron."
— J.D Salinger

"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."
— Holden Caulfield

"You should've heard the crowd, though, when he was finished. You would've puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn't funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things."
— Salinger, J. D.

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
— Salinger, J. D.