The catcher in the rye... that's all I really want to be...
The cards are stacked (quite properly, I imagine) against all professional aesthetes, and no doubt we all deserve the dark, wordy, academic deaths we all sooner or later die.
That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.
Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game all right – I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game abou...
Sicché andò a finire che feci il tema sul guantone da baseball di mio fratello Allie. […] Mio fratello Allie, dunque aveva quel guantone da prenditore, il sinistro. Lui era mancino. La cosa descrittiv...
She's quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny. I watched her once from the window when she was crossing over Fifth Avenue to go to the park, and that's what she is, roller-skate sk...
She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.
One other thing I just thought of. One time, in this movie, Jane did something that just about knocked me out. The newsreel was on or something, and all of a sudden I felt this hand on the back of my...
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. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if...
Look at 'em,' he said. 'Goddam fools.' 'Who?' said Ginnie. 'I don't know. Anybody.
It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.
In the first place, you’re way off when you start railing at things and people instead of at yourself.
If you've had a freakish education, at least use it, use it.
If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a...
I've met the girl. She's a zero in my opinion but terrific-looking. I don't actually know that she's a zero. I mean she hardly said two words the night I met her. Just sat and smiled and smoked, so it...
I'm no goddam animal. I may be a stupid, fouled-up twentieth-century son of a bitch, but I'm no animal. Don't gimme that. I'm no animal.
I went down by a different staircase, and i saw another fuck you on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off....
I mean it's very hard to meditate and live a spiritual life in America. People think you're a freak if you try to.
I have scars on my hand from touching certain people. Once, in the park, when Frannie was still in the carriage, I put my hand on the downy pate of her head and left it there too long. Another time, a...
I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of the writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.