I guess, even before that, I'd get them to empty out everything their parents and everybody ever told them. I mean even if their parents just told them an elephant's big, I'd make them empty that out. An elephant's only big when it's next to something else--a dog or a lady, for example." "I wouldn't even tell them an elephant has a trunk. I might show them an elephant, if I had one handy, but I'd let them just walk up to the elephant not knowing anything more about it than the elephant knew about them. The same thing with grass, and other things. I wouldn't even tell them grass is green. Colors are only names. I mean if you tell them the grass is green, it makes them start expecting the grass to look a certain way--your way--instead of some other way that may be just as good, and may be much better . . . I don't know. I'd just make them vomit up every bit of the apple their parents and everybody made them take a bite out of.


J.D. Salinger

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I thought the two ugly ones were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could te...
J.D. SALINGER
Well. He's a very sensitive boy. He's really never been a terribly good mixer with other boys...' J.D. SALINGER Do you have any emotions?"
"If I do, I don't remember when I ever used them. I don't see what t...
J.D. SALINGER
He was little more than halfway down the staircase when he heard an all-piercing, sustained scream--...
J.D. SALINGER
Nothing in the voice of the cicada intimates how soon it will die.
J.D. SALINGER
Mary Jane. Listen. Please," Eloise said, sobbing. "You remember our freshman year, and I had that br...
J.D. SALINGER
Look at 'em,' he said. 'Goddam fools.' 'Who?' said Ginnie. 'I don't know. Anybody.
J.D. SALINGER
Father said I have no sense of humor at all. He said I was unequipped to meet life because I have no...
J.D. SALINGER
My father wrote beautifully,” Esmé interrupted. “I’m saving a number of his letters for poste...
J.D. SALINGER
Ah, Sharon Lipschutz," said the young man. "How that name comes up. Mixing memory and desire.
J.D. SALINGER
You're just being logical...You're just giving me a regular, intelligent answer. I was trying to hel...
J.D. SALINGER
I see you are looking at my feet," he said to her when car was in motion.
"I beg your pardon?" ...
J.D. SALINGER
You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nichol...
J.D. SALINGER
But doctors talk about cells as if they had such unlimited importance all by themselves. As if they ...
J.D. SALINGER
That cat was a spy. You had to take a pot shot at it. It was a very clever German midget dres...
J.D. SALINGER
I mean it's very hard to meditate and live a spiritual life in America. People think you're a freak ...
J.D. SALINGER
I prayed for the city to be cleared of people, for the gift of being alone—a-l-o-n-e: which is the...
J.D. SALINGER
Listen, if you're not going to be a nun or something, you might as well laugh.
J.D. SALINGER
Each of his phrases was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey...
J.D. SALINGER
Did you see more glass?
J.D. SALINGER
You take a really sleepy man, Esmé, and he always stands a chance of again becoming a man with all ...
J.D. SALINGER
Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was, in terms of permanently memorable...
J.D. SALINGER
You know that apple Adam ate in the Garden of Eden, referred to in the Bible?' he asked. 'You know w...
J.D. SALINGER
She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ...
J.D. SALINGER
The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhapp...
J.D. SALINGER
They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. It'...
J.D. SALINGER
He said I was unequipped to meet life because I had no sense of humor.
J.D. SALINGER
Written in ink, in German, in a small, hopelessly sincere handwriting, were the words "Dear God, lif...
J.D. SALINGER
You asked me how to get out of the finite dimensions when I feel like it. I certainly don't use logi...
J.D. SALINGER
If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable...
J.D. SALINGER
Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things ...
J.D. SALINGER
We’re freaks, that’s all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with ...
J.D. SALINGER
Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them-especially if they were about a thousa...
J.D. SALINGER
If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet.
J.D. SALINGER
People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it.
J.D. SALINGER
Every time you mention some guy that's strictly a bastard— very mean, or very conceited and all—...
J.D. SALINGER
I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do l...
J.D. SALINGER
If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate ev...
J.D. SALINGER
It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.
J.D. SALINGER
Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm goin...
J.D. SALINGER
I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park Sout...
J.D. SALINGER
I don't even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it.
J.D. SALINGER
It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.
J.D. SALINGER
Sleep tight, ya morons!
J.D. SALINGER
Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.
J.D. SALINGER
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was bor...
J.D. SALINGER
Everybody in this family gets his goddamn religion in a different package.
J.D. SALINGER
Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. - Holden Caulfield
J.D. SALINGER
She was around ten minutes late, as a matter of fact. I didn't give a damn, though. All that crap th...
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...
J.D. SALINGER
You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won't wake up, but my mother, all you have t...
J.D. SALINGER
But what I mean is, lots of time you don’t know what interests you most till you start talking abo...
J.D. SALINGER
Then the carousel started, and I watched her go round and round...All the kids tried to grap for the...
J.D. SALINGER
Some people you shouldn't kid, even if they deserve it.
J.D. SALINGER
We got passes, till midnight after the parade. I met Muriel at the Biltmore at seven. Two drinks, tw...
J.D. SALINGER
-Hey, listen," I said. "You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That litt...
J.D. SALINGER
If you're not in
the mood, you can't do that stuff right.
J.D. SALINGER
I can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood.
J.D. SALINGER
There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just ...
J.D. SALINGER
I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of trying to make me happy
J.D. SALINGER
Probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. How well o...
J.D. SALINGER
O tipo da marinha e eu dissemos um ao outro que tinha sido um prazer. Que é uma coisa que me deixa ...
J.D. SALINGER
People always think something's all true.
J.D. SALINGER
It's such a stupid question, in my opinion. I mean, how do you know what you're going to do till you...
J.D. SALINGER
Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly
J.D. SALINGER
Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason…Oh dare to do it Budd...
J.D. SALINGER
I don't like it when it stings,' he said. 'Nobody does.
J.D. SALINGER
American people simply will not countenance being lied to by their own President.
PIERRE SALINGER