Quotes by J. D. Salinger

“Thats the whole trouble. You cant ever find a place thats nice and peaceful, because there isnt any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when youre not looking, somebodyll sneak up and write Fuck you right under your nose.”

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

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobodys around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And Im 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 theyre running and they dont look where theyre going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. Thats all Id do all day. Id just be the catcher in the rye and all.”

“What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean Ive left schools and places I didnt even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I dont care if its a sad good-by, or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know Im leaving it. If you dont, you feel even worse.”

“Among other things, youll find that youre not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. Youre by no means alone on that score, youll 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. Youll learn from them—if you want to. Just as some day, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. Its a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isnt education. Its history. Its poetry.”

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

“Why the hell dontcha, instead of keep saying it?”

“I dont exactly know what i mean by that, but I mean it.”

“Mothers are all slightly insane.”

“Im just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, dont they?”

“People never believe you.”

“How do you know your going to do something, untill you do it?”

“Its you I hate. You are a snooper and a thief.”

“Did you ever get fed up? I said. “I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something?”

“People never notice anything.”

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

“When I really worry about something, I dont just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I dont go. Im too worried to go.”

“Im quite illiterate, but I read a lot.”

“Sex is something I really dont understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away.”

“This fall I think youre riding for - its a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isnt permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangements designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldnt supply them with.”