Salinger Quotes

“Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
― J. D. Salinger

“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, The Catcher in the Rye

“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that is wants to live humbly for one.”
― Wilhelm Stekel

“That’s what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It mad me so damn sad when I thought about it, their never going anywhere swanky for lunch or anything. I knew it wasn’t too important, but it made me sad anyway.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“After I go out this door, I may only exist in the minds of all my acquaintances. I may be an orange peel.”
― J.D. Salinger

“He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“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

“I'm just like any other person you can meet and greet on the street and like or not like. I'm not Holden or Humbert. You can really touch me! If you don't believe me, come to Aristod right now. Come hold and hump me!”
― Brian Celio, Catapult Soul

“Unfortunately, here as elsewhere on this touching planet, imitation is the watchword and prestige the highest ambition.”
― J.D. Salinger, Hapworth 16, 1924

“DAVID SHIELDS: Salinger told Whit Burnett... that on D-Day he was carrying six chapters of 'The Catcher in the Rye', that he needed those pages with him not only as an amulet to help him survive but as a reason to survive.”
― Shane Salerno, Salinger

“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, Last Day of the Last Furlough

“As much as anything else, it was a stare, not so paradoxically, of a privacy-lover who, once his privacy has been invaded, doesn't quite approve when the invader just gets up and leaves, one-two-three, like that.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Ask me something else, Sybil," he said. "That's a fine bathing suit you have on. If there's one thing I like, it's a blue bathing suit."

Sybil stared at him, then looked down at her protruding stomach. "This is a yellow," she said. "This is a yellow."

"It is? Come a little closer." Sybil took a step forward. "You're absolutely right. What a fool I am.”
― J.D. Salinger, A Perfect Day for Bananafish

“Then I thought of something, all of a sudden. “Hey, listen,” I said. “You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?” I realized it was only one chance in a million.”
― Salinger J.D.

“Think about this truck. Make believe this is not the darkest, wettest, most miserable Army truck you have ever ridden in. This truck, you've got to tell yourself, is full of roses and blondes and vitamins. This here is a real pretty truck. This is a swell truck. You were lucky to get this job tonight. When you get back from the dance...Choose yo' pahtnuhs, folks!... you can write an immortal poem about this truck. This truck is a potential poem. You can call it, "Trucks I Have Rode In", or "War and Peace", or "This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise." Keep it simple.”
― J.D. Salinger, This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise

“Rudford lay on his back in the grass and watched great cotton clouds slip through the sky. Peculiarly, he shut his eyes when the sun was momentarily clouded out; opened them when the sun returned scarlet against his eyelids. The trouble was the world might end while his eyes where shut.
It did. His world, in any case.”
― J.D. Salinger, Blue Melody

“چیزی که دنبالش می‌گشتم یه جور احساس خدافظی بود. می‌خوام بگم از خیلی مدرسه‌ها و جاهای دیگه رفته‌م بی‌این‌که بدونم دارم واسه همیشه می‌رم. از این خیلی شاکی می‌شم. به درک که خدافظیش غم‌انگیز یا ناجوره ولی وقتی دارم از جایی می‌رم دوس دارم بدونم که دارم می‌رم. آدم اگه ندونه داره واسه همیشه از جایی می‌ره احساسش از خدافظی هم بدتره.”
― J.D. Salinger

“Madness
Quote #8
Ask me something else, Sybil," he said. "That's a fine bathing suit you have on. If there's one thing I like, it's a blue bathing suit."

Sybil stared at him, then looked down at her protruding stomach. "This is a yellow," she said. "This is a yellow."

"It is? Come a little closer." Sybil took a step forward. "You're absolutely right. What a fool I am.”
― J.D. Salinger, A Perfect Day for Bananafish

“Muita gente já tinha chegado de férias e acho que havia mais ou menos um milhão de garotas por ali, sentada ou em pé esperando os namorados… Era realmente uma paisagem interessante. De certo modo, também era meio deprimente, porque a gente ficava pensando o que ia acontecer com todas elas. Quer dizer, depois que terminassem o ginásio e a faculdade. A maioria ia provavelmente casar com uns bobalhões. Esses sujeitos que vivem dizendo quantos quilômetros fazem com um litro de gasolina. Sujeitos que ficam doentes de raiva, igualzinho a umas crianças, se perdem no golfe ou até mesmo num jogo besta como pingue-pongue. Sujeitos que são um bocado perversos. Sujeitos que nunca na vida abriram um livro. Sujeitos chatos pra burro.”
― Jerome David Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“We always had the same meal on Saturday nights at Pencey. It was supposed to be a big deal, because they gave you steak. I’ll bet a thousand bucks the reason they did that was because a lot of guys’ parents came up to school on Sunday, and old Thurmer probably figured everybody’s mother would ask their darling boy what he had for dinner last night, and he’d say, “Steak.”
― Salinger J.D.

“Mrs. Glass directed a long and oddly comprehensive look at his profile. “He’s a young boy not out of college yet. And you make people nervous, young man,” she said— most equably, for her. “You either take to somebody or you don’t. If you do, then you do all the talking and nobody can even get a word in edgewise. If you don’t like somebody— which is most of the time —then you just sit around like death itself and let the person talk themself into a hole. I’ve seen you do it.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“The reason things seem to stop off somewhere is because that’s the only way most people know how to look at things, he said. But that doesn’t mean they do.”
― J.D. Salinger, Teddy

“If there's a perfect guy for you anywhere," Langston said, "he'll be found hunting for old Salinger editions.”
― Rachel Cohn, David Levithan