I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the idea that formal education or literacy isn't necessary for gaining knowledge and insight.
In this quote, J. D. Salinger highlights that one can gain a wealth of understanding and wisdom through reading, regardless of their formal literacy skills. It suggests that the act of consuming literature is more significant than the technical ability to read and write, emphasizing the importance of learning and self-improvement through experience and curiosity.
In practice
In a speech about lifelong learning, you might say, 'As J. D. Salinger once remarked, I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot, reminding us that knowledge comes from curiosity, not just education.'
Against my better judgment I feel certain that somewhere very near here—the first house down the road, maybe—there's a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here somebody's having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight.
I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete — that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theatre Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.
Each of his phrases was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey.
My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. he was left handed. The thing that was descriptive about it though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up to bat
Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew--knew--that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?
You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won't wake up, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she'll hear you.
Think of what you have rather than of what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them.
If you can get really good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that is a great gift.
Sometimes you need to get hit in the head to realize that you're in a fight.
Even in the worst tragedies and crisis, there’s no reason to add to everyone’s misery by looking miserable yourself.
If you have let pride get the better of you, then you have already lost, but if you grab pride by the scruff of the neck and ride it like a stallion, then you may have already won.
The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.
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