J.D. Salinger

You take a very handsome guy, or a guy that thinks he's a real hot-shot, and they're always asking you to do them a big favor. Just because they're crazy about themself, they think you're crazy about them, too, and that you're just dying to do them a favor. It's sort of funny, in a way.

People always think something's all true.

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and they're pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody's be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way__ can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.

He laughed and the others laughed with him, except Babe, who resented slightly that what he felt so deeply could be reduced to a humor.

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.

Mothers are all slightly insane.

She was not one for emptying her face of expression.

Some guys spend days looking for something they lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I'd care too much.

That's the spirit! Make it chicken broth or nothing. That's putting the old foot down. If she's determined to have a nervous breakdown, the least we can do is see that she doesn't have it in peace.

I can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood.

I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school.

You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. 'Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.

I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human consciousness.

People always think something's all true. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am, I really do. But people never notice. People never notice anything.

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.

That's depressing, when somebody says "please" to you.

These intellectual guys don't like to have an intellectual conversation with you unless they're running the whole thing.

I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?