If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined.

It was the last game of the year and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win.

I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.

You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

I live alone (but catless, I'd like everybody to know).

You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won't wake up, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she'll hear you.

People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it.