It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.

I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.

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

That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.

The Great Gatsby' [...] was my 'Tom Sawyer' when I was twelve [....]

I submit that Zooey's face was close to being a wholly beautiful face. As such, it was of course vulnerable to the same variety of glibly undaunted and usually specious evaluations that any legitimate art object is. I think it just remains to be said that any one of a hundred everyday menaces — a car accident, a head cold, a lie before breakfast — could have disfigured or coarsened his bounteous good looks in a day or a second.

It’s history. It’s poetry.