People are always ruining things for you.
J. D. SALINGERI am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
More J. D. Salinger Quotes
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We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle.
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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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Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.
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And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I’d probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.
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An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.
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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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The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has — I’m not kidding.
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People are mostly hot to have a discussion when you’re not.
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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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It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.
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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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We don’t talk, we hold forth. We don’t converse, we expound.
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I mean they don’t seem able to love us just the way we are. They don’t seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more.
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Don’t hate me because I can’t remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else.
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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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Sentimentality is loving something more than God does.
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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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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 could happily lie down and die sometimes.
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It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.
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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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How long should a man’s legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.
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I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.
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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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Listen, if you’re not going to be a nun or something, you might as well laugh.
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I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.
J. D. SALINGER