Weโre freaks, thatโs all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, thatโs all. Weโre the tattooed lady, and weโre never going to have a minuteโs peace, the rest of our lives, until everybody else is tattooed, too.
J. D. SalingerI 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.
J. D. SalingerI'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete โ that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theatre Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.
J. D. Salinger