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. SALINGERI’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.
More J. D. Salinger Quotes
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Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion.
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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’m up to my ears in unwritten words.
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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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People are mostly hot to have a discussion when you’re not.
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It’s not too bad when the sun’s out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.
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People always clap for the wrong reasons.
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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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Sentimentality is loving something more than God does.
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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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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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I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.
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I’m one of the little foxes that spoil the grapes.
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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.
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Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.
J. D. SALINGER






