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.
— J. D. Salinger
I don't necessarily intend to publish posthumously, but I do like to write for myself.
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.
There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.
The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.
It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.
If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.
Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.
Mothers are all slightly insane.
All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
How long should a man's legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.
I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
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.
There's no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It's all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.
I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.
It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.
Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.
How do you know you're going to do something, untill you do it?
I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.
People never believe you.
I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.
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'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm doing is trying to protect myself and my work.
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.
I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.
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.
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.
I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.
People never notice anything.
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 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.
