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I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I’m crazy. I swear to God I am.

J. D. Salinger

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.
J. D. SALINGER

Change Love Myself Reason Time
Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.
J. D. SALINGER

One Liner Philosophy
I’m up to my ears in unwritten words.
J. D. SALINGER

Myself Word Writing
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.
J. D. SALINGER

Love Myself Religion Smile Writing
Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.
J. D. SALINGER

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

Happiness Myself People
Listen, if you’re not going to be a nun or something, you might as well laugh.
J. D. SALINGER

Job Laugh Listen
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.
J. D. SALINGER

Choice Difference Happiness Himself Joy
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
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
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.
J. D. SALINGER

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

Girl Herself Time
You can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
J. D. SALINGER

Teaching Yourself
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
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.
J. D. SALINGER

Live Love People Strong Talk World Yourself
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.
J. D. SALINGER

Age Myself People
I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.
J. D. SALINGER

Hands Myself People Scars Touch
All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
J. D. SALINGER

Hate Stupidity
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
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.
J. D. SALINGER

Death Forgiveness Himself Kindness
I just hope that one day – preferably when we’re both blind drunk – we can talk about it.
J. D. SALINGER

Drink Hope Myself Talk
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
Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They’re always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
J. D. SALINGER

Emotion Poet
Where do the ducks go in the winter?
J. D. SALINGER

Animal One Liner Winter
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
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

Alone Oneself Stay

I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I’m crazy. I swear to God I am.

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I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I’m crazy. I swear to God I am.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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