J.D. Salinger

Most girls if you hold hands with them, their goddamn hand dies on you

You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live.

He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were.

The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in the pool of autumn twilight. She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.

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.

when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.

But I was afraid of the questions (much more than the accusations) you might both put to me.

God bless ladies with costly, tasteful clothes and touching, dirty fingernails that champion gifted, foreign poets and decorate the library in beautiful, melancholy fashion! My God, this universe is nothing to snicker at!

Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason_Oh dare to do it Buddy! Trust your heart. You__e a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I__ feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I__ give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.

I__l read my books and I__l drink coffee and I__l listen to music, and I__l bolt the

I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they__e always being perverty when I__ around.

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.

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

The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has _ I'm not kidding.

I didn't want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck.

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

Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?