J. D. Salinger Quotes

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

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

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

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

"Mothers are all slightly insane."

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

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

"All morons hate it when you call them a moron."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"People never notice anything."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"People never believe you."

"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."

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

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

"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."