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J.D. Salinger Quotes

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Famous J.D. Salinger Quotes

“Mrs. Glass directed a long and oddly comprehensive look at his profile. “He’s a young boy not out of college yet. And you make people nervous, young man,” she said— most equably, for her. “You either take to somebody or you don’t. If you do, then you do all the talking and nobody can even get a word in edgewise. If you don’t like somebody— which is most of the time —then you just sit around like death itself and let the person talk themself into a hole. I’ve seen you do it.”

SalingerFranny And ZooeyOddly
Book:franny and zooey
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“As a matter of simple logic, there's no difference at all, that I can see, between the man who's greedy for material treasure —or even intellectual treasure — and the man who's greedy for spiritual treasure. As you say, treasure's treasure, God damn it, and it seems to me that ninety percent of all the world-hating saints in history were just as acquisitive and unattractive, basically, as the rest of us are.”

Franny And ZooeyJd SalingerZooeyFrannyGlass Family
Book:franny and zooey
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“The one that sang, old Janine, was always whispering into the g***** microphone before she sang. She'd say, 'And now we like to geeve you our impression of Vooly Voo Fransay. Eet ees the story of leetle Fransh girl who comes to a beeg ceety, just like New York, and falls een love wees a leetle boy from Brookleen. We hope you like eet.' Then, when she was all done whispering and being cute as hell, she'd sing some dopey song, half in English and half in French, and drive all the phonies in the place mad with joy.”

HumorousJd Salinger
Book:THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
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“One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. They were coming in the goddam window. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went around shaking hands with everybody's parents when they drove up to school. He'd be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. You should've seen the way he did with my roommate's parents. I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Haas would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I can't stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills”

The Catcher In The Rye
Author:J.D. Salinger
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“How'd she happen to mention me? Does she do to B.M. now? She said she might go there. she said she might go to Shipley, too. I thought she went to Shipley. how'd she happen to mention me?" - Personally after reading chapters 1-5 and learning about Jane and Holden's relationship as friends or just to people you can tell that obviously he does truly care about this girl. To make situations between Holden and Stradlater I see jealousy come with in the mix when a date between "Strad" and jane come up to holden during one of there normal horsing around moods”

The Catcher In The Rye
Author:J.D. Salinger
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“It isn't just Wally. It could be a girl, for goodness' sake. I mean if he were a girl - somebody in my dorm, for example, - he'd have been painting scenery in some stock company all summer. Or bicycled through wales. Or taken an apartment in New York and worked for a magazine or an advertising company. It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so - I don't know, not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid, necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and - sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.”

ZooeyFranny
Book:franny and zooey
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“One of the thousand reasons I quit going to the theater when I was about twenty was that I resented like hell filing out of the theater just because some playwright was forever slamming down his silly curtain. (What ever became of that stalwart Fortinbras? Who eventually fixed his wagon?) Nonetheless, I’m done here… Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one piece of Holy Ground to the next. Is he never wrong? Just go to bed, now. Quickly. Quickly and slowly.”

Holy Ground
Book:Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
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“I think it should be done over, Buddy. …Please make peace with your wit. It's not going to go away, Buddy. To dump it on your own advice would be as bad and unnatural as dumping your adjectives and your adverbs because Prof. B. wants you to. What does he know about it? What do you really know about your own wit? I've been sitting here tearing up notes to you. I keep starting to say things like 'This one is wonderfully constructed,' and 'The conversation between the two cops is terrific.' So I'm hedging. I'm not sure why. I started to get a little nervous right after you began to read. It sounded like the beginning of something your arch-enemy Bob B. calls a rattling good story. Don't you think he would call this a step in the right direction? Doesn't that worry you? Even what is funny about the woman on the back of the truck doesn't sound like something you think is funny. It sounds much more like something that you think is universally considered funny. I feel gypped. Does that make you mad? You can say our relatedness spoils my judgement. It worries me enough. But I'm also just a reader. Are you a writer or just a writer of rattling good stories. I mind getting a rattling good story from you.”

Writing
Book:Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
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“Nada cambiaba. Lo único que cambiaba era uno mismo. No es que fueras mucho mayor. No era exactamente eso. Sólo que eras diferente. Eso es todo. Llevabas un abrigo distinto, o tu compañera tenía escarlatina, o la señorita Aigletinger no había podido venir y nos llevaba una sustituta o aquella mañana habías oído a tus padres pelearse en el baño, o acababas de pasar en la calle junto a uno de esos charcos llenos del arco iris de la gasolina. Vamos, que siempre pasaba algo que te hacia diferente. No puedo explicar muy bien lo que quiero decir. Y aunque pudiera, creo que no querría.”

CambioIntrospección
Author:J.D. Salinger
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“Eso es lo malo. Que no hay forma de dar con un sitio tranquilo porque no existe. Cuando tu crees que por fin lo has encontrado, te encuentras con que alguien ha escrito un "joder" en la pared. De verdad les digo que cuando me muera y me entierren en un cementerio y me pongan encima una lápida que diga Holden Caufield y los años de mi nacimiento y de mi muerte, debajo alguien escribirá la dichosa palabrita.”

Introspección
Book:THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
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“Well, they swim into a hole where there's a lot of bananas. They're very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I've known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas." He edged the float and its passenger a foot closer to the horizon. "Naturally, after that they're so fat they can't get out of the hole again. Can't fit through the door.”

A Perfect Day For Bananafish
Book:Nine Stories
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