J.D. Salinger Quotes

I have a feeling that you're riding for some terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what kind. This fall I think you're riding for—it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit the bottom. He just keeps falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started...
J.D. Salinger
Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
J.D. Salinger
When I really worry about something, I don´t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don´t go. I´m too worried to go. I don´t want to interrupt my worrying to go.
J.D. Salinger
is he crazy?" --Harcourt-Brace editor on Holden Caulfield
J.D. Salinger
These intellectual guys don't like to have an intellectual conversation with you unless they're running the whole thing.
J.D. Salinger
I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of trying to make me happy
J.D. Salinger
I've read this same sentence about twenty times since you came in."Anybody else except Ackley would've taken the goddamn hint. Not him though..."What the hellya reading?""Goddamn book."He shoved my book back with his hand so that he could see the name on it. "Any good?" he said."This sentence I'm reading is terrific.
J.D. Salinger
I've never seen such a bunch of apple-eaters.
J.D. Salinger
... I was feeling so depressed I didn't even think. That's the whole trouble. When you're feeling very depressed, you can't even think
J.D. Salinger
I always pick a gorgeous time to fall over a suitcase or something.
J.D. Salinger
You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. 'Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.
J.D. Salinger
You asked me how to get out of the finite dimensions when I feel like it. I certainly don't use logic when I do it. Logic's the first thing you have to get rid of.
J.D. Salinger
If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.
J.D. Salinger
I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.
J.D. Salinger