The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
J. D. SALINGERNobody who’s really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies.
More J. D. Salinger Quotes
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We don’t talk, we hold forth. We don’t converse, we expound.
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I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.
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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.
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I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.
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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.
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I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
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Grand. There’s a word I really hate. It’s a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.
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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.
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It’s not too bad when the sun’s out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.
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I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.
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She was not one for emptying her face of expression.
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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?
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Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.
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Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They’re always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
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Sleep tight, ya morons!
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I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.
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I’m up to my ears in unwritten words.
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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.
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The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.
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I can be quite sarcastic when I’m in the mood.
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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.
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You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.
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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.
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That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any.
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I don’t even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it.
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You think of the book you’d most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.
J. D. SALINGER