J. D. Salinger Quotes, Thoughts and images

The world is full of actors pretending to be human

Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.

Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly

I'm up to my ears in unwritten words.

I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.

Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.

People always clap for the wrong reasons.

I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

People are always ruining things for you.

I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.

I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.

Listen, if you're not going to be a nun or something, you might as well laugh.

How long should a man's legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.

I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.

You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.

That's something that annoys the hell out of me-I mean if somebody says the coffee's all ready and it isn't.

I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do

Sentimentality is loving something more than God does.

People are mostly hot to have a discussion when you're not.

I can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood.

I could happily lie down and die sometimes.

I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway.

I don't even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it.

Give me an honest con man any day.

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

That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any.

It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.

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

Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.

We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound.