“There are nice things in the world – and I mean nice things. We’re all such morons to get so sidetracked.”

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

That’s something that annoys the hell out of me-I mean if somebody says the coffee’s all ready and it isn’t.

People never notice anything.

Where do the ducks go in the winter?

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.

You think of the book you’d most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.

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.

I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.

I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

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.

You can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.

I could happily lie down and die sometimes.

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.

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.

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

People are always ruining things for you.

The greatest ideas, the most profound thoughts, and the most beautiful poetry are born from the womb of silence.

No more hard work than look beautiful with eight in the morning until midnight.

My weaknesses had become my strengths, my ugliness had become beauty, my apathy to the world had become a desire to save it.

Don’t you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?

The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love.

Exuberance is beauty.

I was seeing the effects of what music can do — how it can be healing and bring people joy, but on the flip side, there was this ugliness. I saw the greed and the He-Mans that were willing to f*ck over children.

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.