“When you don't see Jesus for exactly what he was, you miss the whole point of the Jesus Prayer. If you don't understand Jesus, you can't understand his prayer - you don't get the prayer at all, you just get… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share Image
“If God had wanted somebody with St. Francis's consistently winning personality for the job in the New Testament, he'd've picked him, you can be sure. As it was, he picked the best, the smartest, the most loving, the least sentimental… — 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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“I still think that, in a way, I can't get past half my childhood dogmas.” — J.D. Salinger Copy Share
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“And I hate to tell you... but I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share
“Hi,' he said. He always said it like he was terrifically bored or terrifically tired. He didn't want you to think he was visiting… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share
“[Y]ou’re someone who took up birds in the first place because they fired your imagination; they fascinated you because ‘they seemed of all created… — J.D. Salinger Copy Share