She was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls, if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hands all the time, as if they were afraid they’d bore you or something. Jane was different. We’d get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we’d start holding hands, and we won’t quite till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.
Submitted on Friday, December 25, 2009 - 02:36 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:The Catcher In The Rye
Link to full quote: Quote #2407 from The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger.
I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck You". I'm positive, in fact.
Submitted on Friday, October 9, 2009 - 10:01 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:The Catcher In The Rye
Link to full quote: Quote #2371 from Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
Written in ink, in German, in a small, hopelessly sincere handwriting, were the words "Dear God, life is hell." Nothing led up to or away from it. Alone on the page, and in the sickly stillness of the room, the words appeared to have the stature of an uncontestable, even classic indictment. X stared at the page for several minutes, trying, against heavy odds, not to be taken in. Then, with far more zeal than he had done anything in weeks, he picked up a pencil stub and wrote down under the inscription, in English, "Fathers and teachers, I ponder, 'What is Hell?' I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."
Submitted on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 21:12 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:For Esmé With Love and Squalor
Link to full quote: Quote #2357 from For Esmé With Love and Squalor by J.D. Salinger.
"Sharon Lipschutz said you let her, sit on the piano seat with you," Sybil said.
"Sharon Lipschutz said that?"
Sybil nodded vigorously.
He let go of her ankles, drew in his hands, and laid the side of his face on his right forearm. "Well," he said, "you know how those things happen, Sybil. I was sitting there playing. And you were nowhere in sight. And Sharon Lipschutz came over and sat down next to me. I couldn't push her off, could I?"
"Yes."
"Oh, no. No. I couldn't do that," said the young man. "I'll tell you what I did do, though."
"What?"
"I pretended she was you."
Submitted on Saturday, August 8, 2009 - 06:39 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:A Perfect Day For Bananafish
Link to full quote: Quote #2340 from A Perfect Day For Bananafish by J.D. Salinger.
She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually since she had reached puberty.
Submitted on Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - 09:43 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:A Perfect Day For Bananafish
Link to full quote: Quote #2321 from A Perfect Day For Bananafish by J.D. Salinger.
Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
Submitted on Tuesday, August 4, 2009 - 09:42 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:Teddy
Link to full quote: Quote #2320 from Teddy by J.D. Salinger.
"Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion."
Submitted on Sunday, August 2, 2009 - 18:34 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:Seymour: An Introduction
Link to full quote: Quote #2314 from Seymour: An Introduction by J.D. Salinger.
"What happened was, I got the idea in my head - and I could not get it out - that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping - and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge - when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake, anyway - is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly. [...]
I don't think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while - just once in a while - there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word "wisdom" mentioned!"Submitted on Sunday, August 2, 2009 - 15:17 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:Franny And Zooey
Link to full quote: Quote #2311 from Franny And Zooey by J.D. Salinger.
"These people you've been ranting about are something else again. [...] I've had them by the dozens, and so has everybody else, and I agree they're not harmless. They're lethal as hell, as a matter of fact. God almighty. They make everything they touch turn absolutely academic and useless. Or - worse - cultish. To my mind, they're mostly to blame for the mob of ignorant oafs with diplomats that are turned loose on the country every June. [...]
I mean you don't just despise what they represent - you despise them. It's too damn personal, Franny. [...] When you tell me about it - and I'm not fooling, now - you tell me about it as though his hair was a goddam personal enemy of yours. That is not right - and you know it. If you're going to go to war the System, just do your shooting like a nice, intelligent girl - because the enemy's there, and not because you don't like his hairdo or his goddam necktie."
Submitted on Sunday, August 2, 2009 - 14:43 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:Franny And Zooey
Link to full quote: Quote #2310 from Franny And Zooey by J.D. Salinger.
"It's everybody, I mean. 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." She stopped. She shook her head briefly, her face quite white, and for just a fractional moment she felt her forehead with her hand--less, it seemed, to find out whether she was perspiring than to check to see, as if she were her own parent, whether she had a fever. "I feel so funny," she said. "I think I'm going crazy. Maybe I'm already crazy."
Submitted on Sunday, August 2, 2009 - 13:49 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:Franny And Zooey
Link to full quote: Quote #2307 from Franny And Zooey by J.D. Salinger.
He said you were the only one who was bitter about S.'s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving.
Submitted on Thursday, April 23, 2009 - 00:14 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:Franny And Zooey
Link to full quote: Quote #2217 from Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger.
If you can't, or won't, think of Seymour, then you go right ahead and call in some ignorant psychoanalyst. You just do that. You just call in some analyst who's experienced in adjusting people to the joys of television, and Life magazine every Wednesday, and European travel, and the H-bomb, and Presidential elections, and the front page of the Times, and God knows what else that's gloriously normal.
Submitted on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 - 23:35 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:Franny And Zooey
Link to full quote: Quote #2214 from Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger.
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.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:31 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. Salinger
Link to full quote: Quote #2182 from Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters by J.D. Salinger.
I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:Franny And Zooey
Link to full quote: Quote #2111 from Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger.
I purely came over because I thought you looked extremely lonely. You have an extremely sensitive face.
Submitted on Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 14:30 — GabrielleWho Said It?:J.D. SalingerSource:For Esmé With Love and Squalor
Link to full quote: Quote #2087 from For Esmé With Love and Squalor by J.D. Salinger.
