Quotes from J. D. Salinger

Oh, this happiness is strong stuff.

I just hope that one day - preferably when we're both blind drunk - we can talk about it.

Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.

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.

I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.

I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway.

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.

Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.

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.

There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.

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 don't necessarily intend to publish posthumously, but I do like to write for myself.

There's no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It's all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.

You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.

Life is a gift horse in my opinion.

It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.

You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.

Nobody who's really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies

There isn't a nightclub in the world that you can sit in for a long time unless you can at least buy some liquor and get drunk. Or unless you're with some girl that really knocks you out.

Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.

He said I was unequipped to meet life because I had no sense of humor.