Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.

— J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger Quotes

The thing is, though, I don’t like the idea. It stinks, if you analyze it. 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 suppose 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

Those war movies always do that to me. I don’t think I could stand it if I had to go to war. I really couldn’t. It wouldn’t be too bad if they’d just take you out and shoot you or something, but you have to stay in the Army so goddam long.

— J.D. Salinger

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

— J.D. Salinger

She listened again. “I’m not funny,” she said. “Really, I’m not. It’s just my face.” She hung up.

— J.D. Salinger

All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all, showing guys on street corners looking sore as hell because their dates are late – that’s bunk. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.

— J.D. Salinger

The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has – I’m not kidding. Anyway, I kept standing next to that crazy cannon, looking down at the game and freezing my ass off. Only, I wasn’t watching the game too much. What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that.

— J.D. Salinger

He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place.

— J.D. Salinger

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.

— J.D. Salinger

If Death – who was out there all the time, possibly sitting on the hood – if Death stepped miraculously through the glass and came in after you, in all probability you just got up and went along with him, ferociously but quietly. Chances were, you could take your cigar with you, if it was a clear Havana.

— J.D. Salinger

I’ve mercifully been allowed the usual professional quota of unmerry thoughts.

— J.D. Salinger

I’m pretty sure he yelled “Good luck!” at me. I hope not. I hope to hell not. I’d never yell “Good luck!” at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.

— J.D. Salinger

You didn’t know this guy, Mr. Vinson. I mean he was very intelligent and all, but you could tell he didn’t have too much brains.

— J.D. Salinger

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?

— J.D. Salinger

You could tell he wasn’t tired at all, though. He was pretty oiled up, for one thing. “I think that one of these days,” he said, “you’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you’ve got to start going there. But immediately. You can’t afford to lose a minute. Not you.

— J.D. Salinger

And I hate to tell you,” he said, “but I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school. You’ll have to. You’re a student – whether the idea appeals to you or not. You’re in love with knowledge.

— J.D. Salinger

Then a funny thing happened. When I got to the museum, all of a sudden I wouldn’t have gone inside for a million bucks. It just didn’t appeal to me – and here I’d walked through the whole goddam park and looked forward to it and all. If Phoebe’d been there, I probably would have, but she wasn’t. So all I did, in front of the museum, was get a cab and go down to the Biltmore. I didn’t feel much like going. I’d made that damn date with Sally, though.

— J.D. Salinger

When I got out in front of Ernie’s and paid the fare, old Horwitz brought up the fish again. He certainly had it on his mind. “Listen,” he said. “If you was a fish, Mother Nature’d take care of you, wouldn’t she? Right? You don’t think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?” “No, but – ” “You’re goddam right they don’t,” Horwitz said, and drove off like a bat out of hell. He was about the touchiest guy I ever met. Everything you said made him sore.

— J.D. Salinger

After I’d told her I had to meet somebody, I didn’t have any goddam choice except to leave. I couldn’t even stick around to hear old Ernie play something halfway decent. But I certainly wasn’t going to sit down at a table with old Lillian Simmons and that Navy guy and be bored to death. So I left. It made me mad, though, when I was getting my coat. People are always ruining things for you.

— J.D. Salinger

The effects of radioactive particles on the human body, so topical in 1959, are nothing new to old-poetry lovers. Used with moderation, a first-class verse is an excellent and usually fast-working form of heat therapy.

— J.D. Salinger

He happens to be a very devout Catholic psychoanalyst, and I thought it might be better than sitting around and watching that child – ” “Bessie, I’m warning you, now, God damn it. I don’t care if he’s a very devout Buddhist veterinarian. If you call in some –.

— J.D. Salinger
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