J. D. Salinger Quotes
January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010
|
All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield 
|
More J. D. Salinger Quotes
I love to write and I assure you I write regularly… But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.
J. D. Salinger— Interview in The Baton Rouge Advocate (1980), as quoted in "J.D. Salinger, author of 'Catcher in the Rye,' dies" in The Washington Post (28 January 2010)
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
J. D. Salinger— Chapter 1, opening sentence
Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has - I'm not kidding.
J. D. Salinger— Chapter 1 (The Catcher in the Rye (1951))
Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules. - Mr. Spencer
J. D. Salinger— Chapter 2 (The Catcher in the Rye (1951))
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.
J. D. Salinger— Chapter 3 (The Catcher in the Rye (1951))
I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.
J. D. Salinger— Chapter 9 (The Catcher in the Rye (1951))
The rest were standing around in hatless, smoky little groups of twos and threes and fours inside the heated waiting room, talking in voices that, almost without exception, sounded collegiately dogmatic, as though each young man, in his strident, conversational turn, was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, non-matriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries.
J. D. Salinger— p.1 (Franny (short story, 1957))
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.
J. D. Salinger— Chapter 18 (The Catcher in the Rye (1951))
