Nobody who's really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies

I kept picturing all these little kids in this big field of rye... If they're running and they don't look where they're going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.

I asked him what, if anything, got him down about teaching. He said he didn't think that anything about it got him exactly down, but there was one thing, he thought, that frightened him: reading the pencilled notations in the margins of books in the college library.

I ignored the flashes of lightning all around me. They either had your number on them or they didn't.

People never notice anything.

Bessie: 'Why don't you get married?' Zooey: 'I like riding in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window anymore when you're married.

God, I wish you could have been there.