black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.

J. D. Salinger

We don’t talk, we hold forth. We don’t converse, we expound.
J. D. SALINGER

Talk
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
You don’t have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
J. D. SALINGER

Talk Teaching Thinking Yourself
The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has — I’m not kidding.
J. D. SALINGER

Education
She was not one for emptying her face of expression.
J. D. SALINGER

Empty Expression Face Herself
I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.
J. D. SALINGER

Courage Myself Sickness
I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.
J. D. SALINGER

Hands Myself People Scars Touch
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
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
I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.
J. D. SALINGER

Beginning Myself

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More J. D. Salinger Quotes