Quotes from J. D. Salinger

He was the tallest, thinnest, weariest boy I had ever seen in my life. He was brilliant. He had gorgeous brown eyes, and he had only two suits. He was completely unhappy, and I didn't know why.

I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life.

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. It's not so good, that way.

But what I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most. I mean you can't help it sometimes.

I love you to pieces, distraction, etc.

I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

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.

In every school I've gone to, all the athletic bastards stick together.

Let's just try to have a marvelous time this weekend. I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible. Especially me. I love you.

The connection was so bad, and I couldn't talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back 'What?

There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything.

They didn't act like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to explain. They acted more like they knew they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good.

What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. 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 love to write and I assure you I write regularly... But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.

If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable.

How do you know you're going to do something, untill you do it?

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.

A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn't stink a little bit of the writer's pride in having given up his pride.

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.

I'd never yell, "Good luck!" at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.

How long should a man's legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.

Oh, God, if I'm anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.