Top 55 Famous J. D. Salinger Quotes (Author of The Catcher in the Rye)
Jerome David Salinger (born 1 January 1919, New York, New York, United States – died 27 January 2010, Cornish, New Hampshire, United States) was an American author. He is best known for his novel “The Catcher in the Rye” (1951). Before its publication, Salinger published several short stories in Story magazine and served in World War II.
17 Wise J. D. Salinger Quotes
People never notice anything.An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. 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 you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.
J. D. Salinger
One day a long time from now you’ll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say about you. That’s when you’ll finally produce the work you’re capable of.I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.How do you know you’re going to do something, until you do it?It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.All morons hate it when you call them a moron.The world is full of actors pretending to be human.Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.
5 J. D. Salinger Quotes on Love
There are still a few men who love desperately.Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.She worries over the way her love for me comes and goes, appears and disappears. She doubts its reality simply because it isn’t as steadily pleasurable as a kitten. God knows it is sad. The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on earth.I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.
That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.
J. D. Salinger
3 J. D. Salinger Quotes on Happiness
Oh, this happiness is strong stuff.The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.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.
5 J. D. Salinger Quotes on Writing and Reading
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.I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.I’m up to my ears in unwritten words.There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It’s peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.When you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write ‘F**k you’ right under your nose.
2 J. D. Salinger Quotes on Poets
Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.
23 J. D. Salinger Quotes That Make You Think
Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.Mothers are all slightly insane.How long should a man's legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they’re mean bastards at heart.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.If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don’t watch it, you start showing off. And then you’re not as good anymore.Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.People always clap for the wrong reasons.It’s really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.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, if he has one.I’m known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I’m doing is trying to protect myself and my work.I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.I am always saying ‘Glad to’ve met you’ to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I’d probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.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'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.
J. D. Salinger
I’m aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’ Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It’s almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf, out of their reach.
J. D. Salinger
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. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.
