If there is an amateur reader still left in the world - or anybody who just reads and runs - I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitud….

If you're going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis and Seymour and Heidi's grandfather all wrapped up in one..

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

In the first place, you’re way off when you start railing at things and people instead of at yourself..

Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next..

Boy, 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. Anyt….

You think of the book you'd most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it..

If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did..

You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world..

Lane himself lit a cigarette as the train pulled in. Then, like so many people, who, perhaps, ought to be issued only a very probational pass to meet….

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 bottom.….

It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his wo….

Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the m….

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,….

She was wearing a canary-yellow two-piece bathing suit, one piece of which she would not actually be needing for another nine or ten years..

God, how I still love private readers. It’s what we all used to be..

How do you know you're going to do something, untill you do it?.

I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice..

Sleep tight, ya morons!.

There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure..

I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while, even if they're only scratching their arms or blowing their nos….