Sentimentality is loving something more than God does.

Did you ever get fed up?' I said. 'I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something?

I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.

I submit that Zooey's face was close to being a wholly beautiful face. As such, it was of course vulnerable to the same variety of glibly undaunted and usually specious evaluations that any legitimate art object is. I think it just remains to be said that any one of a hundred everyday menaces — a car accident, a head cold, a lie before breakfast — could have disfigured or coarsened his bounteous good looks in a day or a second.

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.

Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew--knew--that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?

The little girl on the plane Who turned her doll's head around To look at me.