J. D. Salinger

I feel overwhelmingly grateful to them, but I don't know what to do with their invisible gifts.

The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding

Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it will begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t. After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that won’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.

I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.

Then I’d throw my automatic down the elevator shaft-after I’d wiped off all the fingerprints and all. Then I’d crawl back up to my room and call up Jane and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a cigarette for me to smoke while I was bleeding and all. The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I’m not kidding.

You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

I was surrounded by phonies...They were coming in the goddam window.

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.

For joy, apparently, it was all Franny could do to hold the phone, even with both hands.

He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were.

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?

You can't exist in this world with such strong likes and dislikes.

probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. how well or how badly the man actually knew the girl doesn’t necessarily affect the transformation. she was there, and she was the whole city, and that’s that

The rest, with very little exaggeration, was books. Meant-to-be-picked-up books. Permanently-left-behind books. Uncertain-what-to-do-with books. But books, books. Tall cases lined three walls of the room, filled to and beyond capacity. The overflow had been piled in stacks on the floor. There was little space left for walking, and none whatever for pacing.

You know, I'm the only one in this family who has no problems, . . . And you know why? Because any time I'm feeling blue, or puzzled , what I do, I just invite a few people to come visit me in the bathroom, and--well, we iron things out together, that's all.

who wants flowers when youre dead? nobody.

I’m not going to bed after all. Somebody around here hath murdered sleep. Good for him.

I prayed for the city to be cleared of people, for the gift of being alone—a-l-o-n-e: which is the one New York prayer that rarely gets lost or delayed in channels, and in no time at all everything I touched turned to solid loneliness.

She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.

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.