J. D. Salinger Quotes

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

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

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

“The worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way.”

“I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”

“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”

“Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.”

“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.”

“Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

“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.”

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

“I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.”

“I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake--especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.”

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

“If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late?”

“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.”

“If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "F*ck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.”

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

“Lots of time you don’t know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn’t interest you most.”

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

“People always clap for the wrong reasons.”

“That's the thing about girls. 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. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.”

“That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think.”

“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.”

“When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.”