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

J. D. Salinger

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 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

Myself Stupidity Thinking Yourself
I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.
J. D. SALINGER

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

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

Courage Myself Sickness
Where do the ducks go in the winter?
J. D. SALINGER

Animal One Liner Winter
Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
J. D. SALINGER

Missing Start Yourself
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
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
I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.
J. D. SALINGER

Education Quite Reading
Don’t hate me because I can’t remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else.
J. D. SALINGER

Act Hate Myself Person Remember Talk
I’m one of the little foxes that spoil the grapes.
J. D. SALINGER

Food Myself Oneself
I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.
J. D. SALINGER

Myself Word
Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.
J. D. SALINGER

Mindset True

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

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

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Popular Authors

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