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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.

J. D. Salinger

I’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.
J. D. SALINGER

Be Yourself Different Myself Sick
Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
J. D. SALINGER

Missing Start Yourself
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?
J. D. SALINGER

Action Fear Yourself
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
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
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
People always clap for the wrong reasons.
J. D. SALINGER

People Reason Wrong
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.
J. D. SALINGER

Cold Crazy Kind Road Sun Time
If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.
J. D. SALINGER

Girl Herself Time
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
I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.
J. D. SALINGER

Courage Myself Sickness
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
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
People never notice anything.
J. D. SALINGER

One Liner People
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
Nobody who’s really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies.
J. D. SALINGER

Attitude Himself Reality

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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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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Popular Authors

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