Top 341 Quotes & Sayings by J. D. Salinger

What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. 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. That doesn't happen much, though.

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.

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.

I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.

I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.

I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.

I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.

It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.

I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

People never believe you.

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.

There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.

Mothers are all slightly insane.

I'm aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf, out of their reach.

How do you know you're going to do something, untill you do it?

I don't necessarily intend to publish posthumously, but I do like to write for myself.

There's no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It's all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.

How long should a man's legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.

I'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm doing is trying to protect myself and my work.

You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart.

He had a theory, Walt did, that the religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.

Some stories, my property, have been stolen. Someone's appropriated them. It's an illicit act. It's unfair. Suppose you had a coat you liked, and somebody went into your closet and stole it. That's how I feel.

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.

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.

People never notice anything.

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.

Oh, this happiness is strong stuff.

You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.

Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.

Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.

I'm up to my ears in unwritten words.

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. That doesn't happen much, though.

I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.

Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly

She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. 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.

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.

We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound.

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.

Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew--knew--that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?

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.

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.

People always clap for the wrong reasons.

I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.

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 he wants to live humbly for one.

Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.

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.

I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do

The world is full of actors pretending to be human

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. 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.

Are all your stars shining?