I don’t even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it.
J. D. SALINGERThe fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.
More J. D. Salinger Quotes
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I was sixteen then, and I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen. Sometimes, I act a lot older than I am–I really do. But people never notice it. People never notice anything.
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He said you were the only one who was bitter about S’s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving.
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The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.
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She was not one for emptying her face of expression.
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Nobody who’s really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies.
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If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.
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Mothers are all slightly insane.
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There are nice things in the world – and I mean nice things. We’re all such morons to get so sidetracked.
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Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.
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You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.
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I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
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I mean how do you know what you’re going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don’t. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it’s a stupid question.
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I love to write and I assure you I write regularly. But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.
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I can be quite sarcastic when I’m in the mood.
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I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.
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That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any.
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If you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.
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I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.
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You don’t know how to talk to people you don’t like. Don’t love, really. You can’t live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes.
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Sentimentality is loving something more than God does.
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Did you ever get fed up?’ I said. ‘I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something?
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We don’t talk, we hold forth. We don’t converse, we expound.
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But it wasn’t just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair.
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I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible.
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Grand. There’s a word I really hate. It’s a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.
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I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.
J. D. SALINGER