Quotes By Person: J.D. Salinger
“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”
-J.D. Salinger
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“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 as everybody else, only in a different way.”
-Franny And Zooey, J.D. Salinger
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“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.”
-Franny And Zooey, J.D. Salinger
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“I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”
-Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
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“It seemed like such poor taste, sort of, to want to act in the first place. I mean all the ego. And I used to hate myself so, when I was in a play, to be backstage after the play was over. All those egos running around feeling terribly charitable and warm. Kissing everybody and wearing their makeup all over the place, and then trying to be horribly natural and friendly when your friends came backstage to see you. I just hated myself. .... It was just that I would've been ashamed if, say, anybody I respected--my brothers, for example--came and heard me deliver some of the lines I had to say. I used to write certain people and tell them not to come.”
-Franny And Zooey, J.D. Salinger
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“The religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sicks on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.”
-Franny And Zooey, J.D. Salinger
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“You think everybody does something for some peculiar reason. You don't think anybody calls anybody else up without having some nasty, selfish reason for it.”
-Franny And Zooey, J.D. Salinger
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“Franny has the measles, for one thing. Incidentally, did you hear her last week? She went on at beautiful length about how she used to fly all around the apartment when she was four and no one was home. The new announcer is worse than Grant - if possible, even worse than Sullivan in the old days. He said she surely dreamt that she was able to fly. The baby stood her ground like an angel. She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the lightbulbs.”
-Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, J.D. Salinger
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“If or when I do start going to an analyst, I hope to God he has the foresight to let a dermatologist sit in on consultation. A hand specialist. I have scars on my hands from touching certain people. Once, in the park, when Franny was still in the carriage, I put my hand on the downy pate of her head and left it there too long. Another time, at Loew's Seventy-Second Street, with Zooey during a spooky movie. He was about six or seven, and he went under the sear to avoid watching a scary scene. I put my hand on his head. Certain heads, certain colors and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me. Other things, too. Charlotte once ran away from me, outside the studio, and I grabbed her dress to stop her, to keep her near me. A yellow cotton dress I loved because it was too long for her. I still have a lemon-yellow mark on the palm of my right hand....”
-Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, J.D. Salinger
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“Incidentally, did you hear her last week? She went on at beautiful length about how she used to fly all around the apartment when she was four and no one was home. The new announcer is worse than Grant - if possible, even worse than Sullivan in the old days. He said she surely just dreamt that she was able to fly. The baby stood her ground like an angel. She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the light bulbs.”
-Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, J.D. Salinger
~
“'You love your parents, don't you?'
'Yes, I do - very much,' Teddy said, "but you want to make me use that word to mean what you want it to mean - I can tell.'
'All right. In what sense do you want to use it?'
Teddy thought it over. "You know what the word 'affinity' means?" he asked, turning to Nicholson.
'I have a rough idea,' Nicholson said dryly.
'I have a very strong affinity for them. They're my parents, I mean, and we're all part of each other's harmony and everything,' Teddy said. 'I want them to have a nice time while they're alive, because they like having a nice time... But they don't love me and Booper - that's my sister - that way. I mean they don't seem able to love us just the way we are. They don't seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. It's not so good, that way.'”
-Teddy, J.D. Salinger
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“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. 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 some day, 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”
-The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
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“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.”
-The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
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“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.”
-The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
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“Boy, when you are 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 goddamn cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you are dead? Nobody.”
-The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
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“Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
-The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
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“I used to think she was quite intelligent in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theatre and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not.”
-The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
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“I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoyed the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, that poor bastard.”
-The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
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“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.”
-The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
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“Only, this time I thought I was dying. I really did. I thought I was drowning or something. The trouble was, I could hardly breathe.”
-The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
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“When I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.”
-The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
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“You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart.”
-The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
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