I'd swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong...
I thought you told me Jimmy Jimmereeeno was run over and killed.What?You heard me, Eloise said. Why are you sleeping way over here?Because, said Ramona.Because why? Ramona, I don't feel like--Because...
I say that the true artist seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own human conscience.
I privately say to you old friend (unto you, really, I'm afraid), please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parenthesis: (((( )))). I suppose, most unflorally, I truly mean th...
I mean they don't seem able to love us just the way we are. They don't seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they...
I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go...
I don't want to scare you, he said, but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause.
How old are you? I asked her.Old enough to know better. she said.
His eldest sister (who modestly prefers to be identified here as a Tuckahoe homemaker) has asked me to describe him as looking like 'the blue-eyed Jewish-Irish Mohican scout who died in your arms at t...
He was one of those guys that think they're being a pansy if they don't break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you. God I hate that stuff.
He didn't disagree with me, but he seemed to feel that I have a perfection complex of some kind. Much talk from him, and quite intelligent, on the virtues of living the imperfect life, of accepting on...
He could hear me alright...but he didn't answer me right away. He was the kind of guy that hates to answer you right away.
Give me a story that just makes me unreasonably vigilant. Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason.
For joy, apparently, it was all Franny could do to hold the phone, even with both hands.
For example, when Seymour told one of the twins or Zooey or Franny or even Mme. Boo Boo (who was only two years younger than myself, and often entirely the Lady), to take off his or her galoshes on co...
Don't you think I have sense enough to worry about my motives for saying the prayer? That's exactly what's bothering me so. Just because I'm choosy about what I want - in this case, enlightenment or p...
But guilt is guilt. It doesn't go away. It can't be nullified. It can't even be fully understood, I'm certain - it's roots run too deep into private and long-standing karma. About the only thing that...
Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row.
A few years before, it had taken her three days to dispose of the Easter chick she had found dead on the sawdust in the bottom of her wastebasket.
A story never ends. The narrator is usually provided with a nice, artistic spot for his voice to stop, but that's about all.