The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger

Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right—I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.

but all the athletic bastards stuck together. In every school I’ve gone to, all the athletic bastards stick together.

But you can’t always tell—with somebody’s mother, I mean. Mothers are all slightly insane.

You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys. Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars.

Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong.

‘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 hate to tell new stuff to somebody around a hundred years old. They don’t like to hear it.