“Writing a book is a horrible exhausting struggle; one would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“this sentence I'm reading is terrific" i can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood. He didn't get it, though. He… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“I'm profoundly attracted to classical Zen literature, I have the gall to lecture on it and the literature of Mahayana Buddhism one… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“...What gets me about D.B., though, he hated the war so much, and yet he got me to read this book A… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“I knew a lot of guys at Pencey I thought were a lot handsomer than Stradlater, but they wouldn't look handsome if… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“The rest, with very little exaggeration, was books. Meant-to-be-picked-up books. Permanently-left-behind books. Uncertain-what-to-do-with books. But books, books. Tall cases lined three walls… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“God bless ladies with costly, tasteful clothes and touching, dirty fingernails that champion gifted, foreign poets and decorate the library in beautiful,… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“I am a dash man and not a miler, and it is probable that I will never write a novel. So far… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“We know the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand clapping? – A Zen Kōan” — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“While the consequences are often quite hellish, I am absolutely and perhaps permanently against ignoring books recommended from the heart by very… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“What, I wonder, does the reader know of large families? More important, how much can he stand hearing on the subject, from… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“I knew her like a book. I really did. I mean, besides checkers, she was quite fond of all athletic sports, and… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“This is the squalid, or moving, part of the story, and the scene changes. The people change, too. I'm still around, but… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all… I'm standing on the edge of… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it. I can't always pray when I feel like… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything.… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was… The only thing that would be different would… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“And you make people nervous, young man," she said - most equably, for her. "You either take to somebody or you don't. If you… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“I still think that, in a way, I can't get past half my childhood dogmas.” — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“He stuck around till around dinnertime, talking about all the guys at Pencey that he hated their guts, and squeezing this big pimple on… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“For example, when Seymour told one of the twins or Zooey or Franny or even Mme. Boo Boo (who was only two years younger… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“The cigars are ballast, sweetheart. Sheer ballast. If he didn’t have a cigar to hold on to, his feet would leave the ground. We’d… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“They're just people that write poems that get published and anthologized all over the place but they're not poets.” — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“In certain Zen monasteries, it's a cardinal rule, if not the only serious enforced discipline, that when one monk calls out 'Hi!' to another… — j.d. salinger Copy Share Image
