Franny and Zooey

by J.D. Salinger

“That’s partly what’s so awful. I mean they’re not real poets. They’re just people that write poems that get published and anthologized all over the place, but they’re not poets.”

I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.

And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.”

“All I know is I’m losing my mind,” Franny said. “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

any name of God—any name at all—has this peculiar, self-active power of its own, and it starts working after you’ve sort of started it up.”