I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway.

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.

I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.

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.

Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row.

If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me.

You think of the book you'd most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.