... even the most sublimely accomplished non-stop talker can't consistently please.

She wrote to him fairly regularly, from a paradise of triple exclamation points and inaccurate observations.

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 used to think she was quite intelligent , in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about all those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not.

I was trying to feel some kind of good-bye. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t you feel even worse.

People never notice anything.

Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines. Give me an honest con man any day.