01UndatedWhen the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice—twice—we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner—everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wished he wasn't there.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
02UndatedYou 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.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
04UndatedWhat 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.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
05UndatedGrand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
06UndatedI think it should be done over, Buddy. …Please make peace with your wit. It's not going to go away, Buddy. To dump it on your own advice would be as bad and unnatural as dumping your adjectives and your adverbs because Prof. B. wants you to. What does he know about it? What do you really know about your own wit?I've been sitting here tearing up notes to you. I keep starting to say things like 'This one is wonderfully constructed,' and 'The conversation between the two cops is terrific.' So I'm hedging. I'm not sure why. I started to get a little nervous right after you began to read. It sounded like the beginning of something your arch-enemy Bob B. calls a rattling good story. Don't you think he would call this a step in the right direction? Doesn't that worry you? Even what is funny about the woman on the back of the truck doesn't sound like something you think is funny. It sounds much more like something that you think is universally considered funny. I feel gypped. Does that make you mad? You can say our relatedness spoils my judgement. It worries me enough. But I'm also just a reader. Are you a writer or just a writer of rattling good stories. I mind getting a rattling good story from you.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
08UndatedYou can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
09UndatedI didn't want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
10UndatedThe more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has — I'm not kidding.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
11UndatedI know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they’re always being perverty when I’m around.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
12UndatedI’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt theJ.D. Salinger / quote ↗
13UndatedGod 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!J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
14UndatedBut I was afraid of the questions (much more than the accusations) you might both put to me.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
15UndatedI 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.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
16UndatedThe 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.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
17UndatedHe 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.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
18UndatedYou never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
19UndatedMost girls if you hold hands with them, their goddamn hand dies on youJ.D. Salinger / quote ↗
21UndatedHer joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was, in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces, a stunning and final girl.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
22UndatedCertain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
23UndatedAn artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
24UndatedThe worst that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.J.D. Salinger / quote ↗
