Top 100 Salinger's Quotes
#1. With his ABC News experience, perhaps Pierre Salinger's next job could be cohosting-with Oliver Stone-a 24-hour Conspiracy Network.
Jonathan Alter
#2. Contrast J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. The author adopts the childish view of adults as inhumanly powerful and uncomprehending, and never goes beyond it; and so his novel, published for adults, is better appreciated by ten-year-olds. The
Ursula K. Le Guin
#3. From Dickens's cockneys to Salinger's phonies, from Kerouac's beatniks to Cheech and Chong's freaks, and on to hip hop's homies, dialect has always been used as a way for generations to distinguish themselves.
Christopher Moore
#4. I was giving a speech one time, and the woman who introduced me said, 'Well, she used to be J. D. Salinger's girlfriend. I thought, 'God, is that all I've been?' I didn't want to be reduced to that.
Joyce Maynard
#5. I am more than a little jealous that the wonder I am party to has been sprinkled over Salinger's gray head.
W.P. Kinsella
#6. That's something that drives me crazy. When people say something twice that way, after you admit it the first time.
J.D. Salinger
#7. If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable.
J.D. Salinger
#8. It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean, how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question.
J.D. Salinger
#9. Think how practical, pleasant, and thrilling it would be if one could open one's mouth, from time to time, and something other than sheer, forward, unreliable opinion came out!
J.D. Salinger
#10. People always think something's all true. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am, I really do. But people never notice. People never notice anything.
J.D. Salinger
#11. I also say "Boy" a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and some times I act like I'm about thirteen. It's really ironical, because I'm six foot two and a half and I have gray hair.
J.D. Salinger
#12. That's the spirit! Make it chicken broth or nothing. That's putting the old foot down. If she's determined to have a nervous breakdown, the least we can do is see that she doesn't have it in peace.
J.D. Salinger
#13. Hi,' he said. He always said it like he was terrifically bored or terrifically tired. He didn't want you to think he was visiting you or anything. He wanted you to think he'd come in by mistake, for God's sake.
J.D. Salinger
#14. He was the kind of phony that have to give themselves room when they answer somebody's question
J.D. Salinger
#15. I mean it's very hard to meditate and live a spiritual life in America. People think you're a freak if you try to.
J.D. Salinger
#16. New York's terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed.
J.D. Salinger
#17. She's an irritating, opinionated woman, a type Buddy can't stand. I don't think he could see her for what she is. A person, deprived, for life, of any understanding or taste for the main current of poetry that flows through things, all things.
J.D. Salinger
#18. Why's it so sunny?" she repeated.
Zooey observed her rather narrowly. "I bring the sun wherever I go, buddy," he said.
J.D. Salinger
#19. Some of them are starting to sink now. In a few minutes, the only place they'll still be floating will be inside my mind. That's quite interesting, because if you look at it a certain way, that's where they started floating in the first place.
J.D. Salinger
#20. Jesus, life has its share of honorable thrills if one but keeps one's eyes open!
J.D. Salinger
#21. He was reading with his mouth open, and he didn't hear me walk across the porch and sit down on the railing opposite his chair.
I kicked his chair with the toe of my shoe. "Stop reading, Mac," I said. "Put down that book. Entertain me." He was reading Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
J.D. Salinger
#22. God, how I still love private readers. It's what we all used to be.
J.D. Salinger
#23. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.
J.D. Salinger
#24. The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.
J.D. Salinger
#25. They didn't act like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to explain. They acted more like they knew they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good.
J.D. Salinger
#26. It's so silly. All you do is get the heck out of your body when you die. My gosh, everybody's done it thousands of times. Just because they don't remember, it doesn't mean they haven't done it.
J.D. Salinger
#27. I would really hate it if I could call up Kafka or Hemingway or Salinger and any question I could throw at them they would have an answer. That's the magic when you read or hear something wonderful - there's no one that has all the answers.
Regina Spektor
#28. Jackie Kennedy was magnificent in the days and weeks immediately following her husband's assassination. She was especially wonderful to me.
Pierre Salinger
#29. Then again you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.'
J.D. Salinger
#30. A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn't stink a little bit of the writer's pride in having given up his pride.
J.D. Salinger
#31. But don't tell me I'm not sensitive to beauty. That's my Achilles' heel, and don't you forget it. To me, everything is beautiful. Show me a pink sunset and I'm limp, by God ...
J.D. Salinger
#32. Oh, it's lovely to see you!' Franny said as the cab moved off. 'I've missed you.' The words were no sooner out than she realized that she didn't mean them at all.
J.D. Salinger
#33. Something happens, and the words get synchronized with the person's heartbeats, and then you're actually praying without ceasing ...
J.D. Salinger
#34. Dont's ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everyone- Holden Caulfield
J.D. Salinger
#35. The catcher in the rye ... that's all I really want to be ...
J.D. Salinger
#36. [On The Catcher in the Rye] "This Salinger, he's a short story guy. And he knows how to write about kids. This book though, it's too long. Gets kind of monotonous. And he should've cut out a lot about these jerks and all that crumby school. They depress me. - James Stern
The New York Times
#37. Oh ... It's too long a story. I never bore people I haven't know for at least a thousand years.
J.D. Salinger
#38. A woman's body is like a violin and all, and that it takes a terrific musician to play it right
J.D. Salinger
#39. Everybody just thinks things keep stopping off somewhere. They don't ... The reason things seem to stop off somewhere is because that's the only way most people know how to look at things. But that doesn't mean they do.
J.D. Salinger
#40. The only time I have ever seen my father cry in my whole life was the day he watched JFK's funeral procession on television.
Margaret A. Salinger
#41. If you're going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis and Seymour and Heidi's grandfather all wrapped up in one.
J.D. Salinger
#42. It's full of phonies and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a golden Cadillac ...
J.D. Salinger
#43. To outlive one's child is a terrible thing, but to do so because your child has taken his or her life is horrible.
Pierre Salinger
#44. One day a long time from now you'll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say about you. That's when you'll finally produce the work you're capable of.
J.D. Salinger
#45. That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.
J.D. Salinger
#46. There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.
J.D. Salinger
#47. Beauties" by Anton Chekhov, "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J. D. Salinger, "Brownies" or "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" both by ZZ Packer, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel, "Fat" by Raymond Carver, "Indian Camp
Gabrielle Zevin
#48. How long should a man's legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.
J.D. Salinger
#49. God almighty, Franny," he said. "If you're going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis and Seymour and Heidi's grandfather all wrapped up in one. Keep him in mind if you say it, and him only, and him as he was and not as you'd like him to have been.
J.D. Salinger
#50. At least I'm still in love with Yorick's skull. At least I always have time enough to stay in love with Yorick's skull. I want an honorable goddam skull when I'm dead, buddy. I hanker after an honorable goddam skull like Yorick's.
J.D. Salinger
#51. God, how I hate it when somebody yells "Good luck!" at me when I'm leaving somewhere. It's depressing.
J.D. Salinger
#52. That's one nice thing about carrousels, they always play the same songs.
J.D. Salinger
#53. This is nobody's fault, swiftly be assured; being human beings with personal opinions and brains, we are respondent to any shreds of beauty we can get; I myself am hopelessly respondent to it!
J.D. Salinger
#54. Oh, I don't know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don't know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all.
J.D. Salinger
#55. I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty ... you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.
J.D. Salinger
#56. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.
J.D. Salinger
#57. I never really knew anything about friendship before I was in the Army. Did you Vince?"
"Not a thing. It's the best thing there is. Just About.
J.D. Salinger
#58. Yes, I have an ulcer, for Chrissake. This is Kaliyuga, buddy, the Iron Age. Anybody over sixteen without an ulcer's a goddam spy.
J.D. Salinger
#59. It's just that if I'd had any guts at all, I wouldn't have gone back to college at all this year. I don't know. I mean it's all the most incredible farce.
J.D. Salinger
#60. The thing is, it drives me crazy if somebody else gets killed - especially somebody very smart and entertaining and all - and it's somebody else's fault.
J.D. Salinger
#61. My god, there's absolutely nothing tenth-rate about you, and yet you're up to your neck at this minute in tenth-rate thinking.
J.D. Salinger
#62. It's funny. You take adults, they look lousy when they're asleep and they have their mouths way open, but kids don't. Kids look alright. They can even have spit all over the pillow and they still look alright.
J.D. Salinger
#63. You take a very handsome guy, or a guy that thinks he's a real hot-shot, and they're always asking you to do them a big favor. Just because they're crazy about themself, they think you're crazy about them, too, and that you're just dying to do them a favor. It's sort of funny, in a way.
J.D. Salinger
#64. The mark of a mature man is not willing to die for a worthy cause, rather it's willing to live for one
J.D. Salinger
#65. The little girl on the plane Who turned her doll's head around To look at me.
J.D. Salinger
#66. It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.
J.D. Salinger
#67. It's one of those places that are supposed to be very sophisticated and all, and the phonies are coming in the window.
J.D. Salinger
#68. It's the sort of absurd notion, though, that I wouldn't mind taking out for a good academic run someday.
J.D. Salinger
#69. Aunt
Uh
There's a war on. Uh
I mean you've seen it on the newsreels. I mean you've heard it on the radio and all, haven't you?
J.D. Salinger
#70. < ... > However I have thought of you frequently and of the extremely pleasant afternoon we spent in each other's company on April 30, 1944 between 3:45 and 4:15 P. M. in case it slipped your mind.
J.D. Salinger
#71. I'm a huge classics fan. I love Ernest Hemingway and J.D. Salinger. I'm that guy who rereads a book before I read newer stuff, which is probably not all that progressive, and it's not really going to make me a better reader. I'm like, 'Oh, my God, you should read To Kill a Mockingbird.'
John Krasinski
#72. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late?
J.D. Salinger
#73. Undoubtedly, though, what I'm really getting at is this: Since the bridegroom's permanent retirement from the scene, I haven't been able to think of anybody whom I'd care to send out to look for horses in his stead.
J.D. Salinger
#74. (He) looked directly into his own eyes, as though his eyes were neutral territory, a no man's land in a private war against narcissism.
J.D. Salinger
#75. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them.
J.D. Salinger
#76. And I like his conceit. He's so conceited he's actually humble, the crazy bastard.
J.D. Salinger
#77. That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.
J.D. Salinger
#79. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me.
J.D. Salinger
#80. It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his working years.
J.D. Salinger
#81. 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.
J.D. Salinger
#82. It didn't exactly depress me to think about it, but it didn't make me feel gay as hell either. Certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but its too bad anyways.
J.D. Salinger
#83. Nobody who's really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies
J.D. Salinger
#84. That's something that annoys the hell out of me- I mean if somebody says the coffee's all ready and it isn't
J.D. Salinger
#85. I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.
J.D. Salinger
#86. I mean if thousands of little kids are running and they do not look where they are going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day, I just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but this is the only thing that I really like to do!
J.D. Salinger
#87. It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true.
J.D. Salinger
#88. We're freaks, that's all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that's all. We're the tattooed lady, and we're never going to have a minute's peace, the rest of our lives, until everybody else is tattooed, too.
J.D. Salinger
#89. He's like everybody else in television. And Hollywood. And Broadway. He thinks everything sentimental is tender, everything brutal is a slice of realism and that everything that runs into physical violence is a legitimate climax to something that isn't even-
J.D. Salinger
#90. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.
J.D. Salinger
#91. She's quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny. I watched her once from the window when she was crossing over Fifth Avenue to go to the park, and that's what she is, roller-skate skinny. You'd like her.
J.D. Salinger
#92. He looked at me with his eyes shining - yes, shining. The boy's eyes could shine.
J.D. Salinger
#93. 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. I know it's crazy.
J.D. Salinger
#94. 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.
J.D. Salinger
#95. Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.
J.D. Salinger
#96. [ ... ] don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? ... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.
J.D. Salinger
#97. I was trying to feel some kind of good-bye. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't you feel even worse.
J.D. Salinger
#99. I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger
#100. Maybe there's a trapdoor under my chair, and I'll just disappear.
J.D. Salinger
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
