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The Catcher In The Rye Quotes

Browse 60 quotes about The Catcher In The Rye.

The Catcher In The Rye Quotes

“Jesse believed stories were the collective memories of the world, recorded in books so that each of us could know who we were before we became who we are. He said that's why people love The Catcher in the Rye when they're teenagers, but fall out of love with it as adults. We're all Holden Caulfield at fifteen, but when we grow up we want to be Atticus Finch.”

“You would’ve puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn’t funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I’d hate it. I wouldn’t even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I’d play it in the goddam closet.”

“In the first place, I’m sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don’t care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down.”

“I flunked you in history because you knew absolutely nothing.” “I know that, sir. Boy, I know it. You couldn’t help it.” “Absolutely nothing,” he said over again. That’s something that drives me crazy. When people say something twice that way, after you admit it the first time. Then he said it three times. “But absolutely nothing. I doubt very much if you opened your textbook even once the whole term. Did you? Tell the truth, boy.”

“Do you feel absolutely no concern for your future, boy?” “Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do.” I thought about it for a minute. “But not too much, I guess. Not too much, I guess.” “You will,” old Spencer said. “You will, boy. You will when it’s too late.” I didn’t like hearing him say that. It made me sound dead or something. It was very depressing. “I guess I will,” I said.”

“Lawyers are alright, I guess — but it doesn't appeal to me", I said. "I mean they're alright if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn't.”

“We have a bad habit of seeing books as sort of cheaply made movies where the words do nothing but create visual narratives in our heads. So too often what passes for literary criticism is "I couldn't picture that guy", or "I liked that part", or "this part shouldn't have happened." That is, we've left language so far behind that sometimes we judge quality solely based on a story's actions. So we can appreciate a novel that constructs its conflicts primarily through plot - the layered ambiguity of a fatal car accident caused by a vehicle owned by Gatsby but driven by someone else, for instance. But in this image-drenched world, sometimes we struggle to appreciate and celebrate books where the quality arises not exclusively from plot but also from the language itself.”

“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”

“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”

“Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suite you, aren't becoming to you. You will begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.”

“On je uvijek tražio od čovjeka da mu čini velike usluge. Uzmite takvog veoma lijepog mladića, ili nekog tko za sebe misli kako je u svemu glavni, i te stvari, takvi će ljudi od vas vječito tražiti da im činite velike usluge. Samo zbog toga što je takav čovjek lud za samim sobom, on misli kako ste i vi ludi za njim i kako umirete od želje da mu na svaki mogući način ugodite. To je pomalo smiješno, u jednu ruku.”