I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what kind.... It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. I just don't know.
J. D. SalingerThat's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any.
J. D. SalingerYou don't know how to talk to people you don't like. Don't love, really. You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes.
J. D. SalingerYou take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart.
J. D. SalingerThere is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.
J. D. SalingerHe was the tallest, thinnest, weariest boy I had ever seen in my life. He was brilliant. He had gorgeous brown eyes, and he had only two suits. He was completely unhappy, and I didn't know why.
J. D. SalingerI was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all, Teddy said. It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was a tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.
J. D. Salinger