I am always saying “Glad to’ve met you” to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.
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.
I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.
In the first place, you’re way off when you start railing at things and people instead of at yourself.
When I really worry about something, I don’t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don’t go. I’m too worried to go. I don’t want to interrupt my worrying to go.
I knew it wasn’t too important, but it made me sad anyway.
It’s really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.
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.
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.
I could happily lie down and die sometimes.
But it wasn’t just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair.
You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.
If there is an amateur reader still left in the world – or anybody who just reads and runs – I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children.
If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don’t watch it, you start showing off. And then you’re not as good any more.
She was not one for emptying her face of expression.
Franny was staring at the little blotch of sunshine with a special intensity, as if she were considering lying down in it.
I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I’m crazy. I swear to God I am.
It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn’t, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world.
There are nice things in the world – and I mean nice things. We’re all such morons to get so sidetracked.
If I were God, I certainly wouldn’t want people to love me sentimentally. It’s too unreliable.