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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

That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any.
J. D. SALINGER

Peace Place Yourself
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
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
I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
J. D. SALINGER

Happiness Myself People
If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.
J. D. SALINGER

Girl Herself Time
I have scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me.
J. D. SALINGER

Hands Human Myself Scars Touch
It’s not too bad when the sun’s out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.
J. D. SALINGER

Bad Feeling Sun
It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.
J. D. SALINGER

Funny Understand
Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.
J. D. SALINGER

People Rich
Why’s it so sunny? she repeated. Zooey observed her rather narrowly. I bring the sun wherever I go, buddy, he said.
J. D. SALINGER

Herself Sun
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.
J. D. SALINGER

Lie Life Music Myself Travel
Sentimentality is loving something more than God does.
J. D. SALINGER

Emotional God Love
The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.
J. D. SALINGER

Choice Material Poet True
I can be quite sarcastic when I’m in the mood.
J. D. SALINGER

Myself Quite Sarcastic
How long should a man’s legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.
J. D. SALINGER

Man 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

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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