The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger

and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

that stuff bores me,

I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.

crumby place,

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me.

“Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men.” Strictly for the birds. They don’t do any damn more molding at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn’t know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably came to Pencey that way.

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

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.

I have no wind, if you want to know the truth. I’m quite a heavy smoker, for one thing—

you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.

I know that sounds mean to say, but I don’t mean it mean.

But if you thought about him just enough and not too much, you could figure it out that he wasn’t doing too bad for himself. For instance, one Sunday when some other guys and I were over there for hot chocolate, he showed us this old beat-up Navajo blanket that he and Mrs. Spencer’d bought off some Indian in Yellowstone Park. You could tell old Spencer’d got a big bang out of buying it. That’s what I mean. You take somebody old as hell, like old Spencer, and they can get a big bang out of buying a blanket.

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.

I shake my head quite a lot. “Boy!” I said. I also say “Boy!” quite a lot.

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

People never notice anything.

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

He wasn’t even listening. He hardly ever listened to you when you said something.

That’s something that drives me crazy. When people say something twice that way,

The old bull.

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.

One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That’s all. They were coming in the goddam window.

I can’t stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy.

I’ll be all right. I’m just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don’t they?”

I’m pretty sure he yelled “Good luck!” at me. I hope not. I hope to hell not. I’d never yell “Good luck!” at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.

I’M THE MOST TERRIFIC LIAR you ever saw in your life. It’s awful.

Then he started telling us how he was never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down on his knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God—talk to Him and all—wherever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all.

very corny, I’ll admit, but I liked it that way.

book. I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

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.

He did it on purpose. You could tell.

I can be quite sarcastic when I’m in the mood.

He always brought out the old sadist in me. I was pretty sadistic with him quite often.

I call people a “prince” quite often when I’m horsing around. It keeps me from getting bored or something.

“He’s got this goddam superior attitude all the time,” Ackley said. “I don’t even think the sonuvabitch is intelligent. He thinks he is. He thinks he’s about the most—”

Just because they’re crazy about themself, they think you’re crazy about them, too,

I was getting sort of nervous, all of a sudden. I’m quite a nervous guy.

You couldn’t rile him too easily. He was too conceited.

said he didn’t mind but that he wasn’t too crazy about the idea.

He was the kind of a guy that hates to answer you right away.

People never believe you.

The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere.

I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it.

I don’t want to interrupt my worrying