“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.”

Sleep tight, ya morons!

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.

She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

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.

It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.

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.

Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.

I don’t even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it.

Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.

She was not one for emptying her face of expression.

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.

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.

I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.

You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.