J.D. Salinger

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.

I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy.

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

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.

I think that one of these days, he said, you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you.

I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.

And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.

It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true.

Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.

I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean, how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question.