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Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.

J. D. Salinger

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.
J. D. SALINGER

Myself Stupidity Thinking Yourself
A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn’t stink a little bit of the writer’s pride in having given up his pride.
J. D. SALINGER

Pride Writing
People are always ruining things for you.
J. D. SALINGER

People Ruin Yourself
The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has — I’m not kidding.
J. D. SALINGER

Education
I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.
J. D. SALINGER

Beginning Myself
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.
J. D. SALINGER

Easy Family Hairs Himself Mad People
I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.
J. D. SALINGER

Hands Myself People Scars Touch
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.
J. D. SALINGER

Distance Family Kind Language Relationship Talk
I could happily lie down and die sometimes.
J. D. SALINGER

Death Happiness Lie Myself
I’m up to my ears in unwritten words.
J. D. SALINGER

Myself Word Writing
The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.
J. D. SALINGER

Art Happiness Worst
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.
J. D. SALINGER

Alone Happiness Love Myself Writing
Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew–knew–that we’re carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we’re all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?
J. D. SALINGER

Carry Emotional Heaven Imaginational Stupidity
I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
J. D. SALINGER

Happiness Myself People
You think of the book you’d most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.
J. D. SALINGER

Book Reading Shame Thinking Writing Yourself
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
J. D. SALINGER

Death Live Man Oneself

Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.

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Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.

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Popular Authors

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