Boy, it began to rain like a bastard. In buckets, I swear to God. All the parents and mothers and everybody went over and stood right under the roof of the carrousel, so they wouldn’t...

I can be quite sarcastic when I’m in the mood.

Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.”Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game,...

While the consequences are often quite hellish, I am absolutely and perhaps permanently against ignoring books recommended from the heart by very nice people and strangers; it is too risky and inhuman; also the consequences...

… I was feeling so depressed I didn’t even think. That’s the whole trouble. When you’re feeling very depressed, you can’t even think

Give me an honest con man any day.

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.

Look at ’em,’ he said. ‘Goddam fools.’ ‘Who?’ said Ginnie. ‘I don’t know. Anybody.

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

The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they’ll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don’t like him, no matter how nice...

I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable...

I didn’t want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck.

Her neyse, atom bombasını keşfettiklerine çok memnunum bir bakıma. Yeni bir savaş olursa, gider bombanın tepesine otururum. Bunun için gönüllü giderim, yemin ediyorum.

Probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. How well or how badly the man actually knew the girl doesn’t necessarily affect the transformation. She...

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

You asked me how to get out of the finite dimensions when I feel like it. I certainly don’t use logic when I do it. Logic’s the first thing you have to get rid of.

…but don’t tell me I’m not sensitive to beauty. That’s my Achilles’ heel, and don’t you forget it. To me, everything is beautiful. Show me a pink sunset and I’m limp, by God…

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.

The room was not impressively large, even by Manhattan apartment-house standards, but its accumulated furnishings might have lent a snug appearance to a banquet hall in Valhalla.

You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?’ he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. ‘Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he’d have a very,...

I’m no goddam animal. I may be a stupid, fouled-up twentieth-century son of a bitch, but I’m no animal. Don’t gimme that. I’m no animal.

I’ve never seen such a bunch of apple-eaters.

Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. – Holden Caulfield

It’s everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don’t know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst...

The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has — I’m not kidding.

Derdi ki, dünyadaki evli erkeklerin yarısı homoymuş, ama kendileri bile öyle olduklarını bilmezlermiş. Eğer eğiliminiz varsa, bir gece içinde homo olabilirmişsiniz. Felaket korkuturdu bizi. Homo olacakmıyım acaba diye dertlenir dururdum.

The goddamn movies. They can ruin you. I’m not kidding -Holden Caulfield

You don’t have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.

I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while—just once in a while—there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to...

God almighty, Franny,” he said. “If you’re going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis and Seymour and Heidi’s grandfather all wrapped up in one. Keep...

People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily,…,and he had very red hair.

I purely came over because I thought you looked extremely lonely. You have an extremely sensitive face.

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And...

Ah nerede o günler, gerçekten öldüğüm zaman, şöyle aklı başında biri çıkıp beni denize filan atıverse, ne iyi olurdu. Ne yaparlarsa yapsınlar da, beni lanet bir mezara tıkmasınlar. Pazar günleri millet gelip karnınızın üstüne bir...

I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of trying to make me happy

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

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching...

I am always saying “Glad to’ve met you” to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.

If you’re not inthe mood, you can’t do that stuff right.

Some guys spend days looking for something they lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I’d care too much.

I’m not trying to tell you,” he said “that only educated men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It’s not so.But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they’re brilliant...

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.

Bir kitabı okuyup bitirdiğiniz zaman, bunu yazan keşke çok yakın bir arkadaşım olaydı da, canım her istediğinde onu telefonla arayıp konuşabilseydim diyorsanız, o kitap bence gerçekten iyidir.

I think that once you have a fair idea where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school.

I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they’re always being perverty when I’m around.

Her neyse, hep, büyük bir çavdar tarlasında oyun oynayan çocuklar getiriyorum gözümün önüne. Binlerce çocuk, başka kimse yok ortalıkta yetişkin hiç kimse, yani benden başka. Ve çılgın bir uçurumun kenarında durmuşum. Ne yapıyorum, uçuruma yaklaşan...

If German boys had learned to be contemptuous of violence, Hitler would have had to take up knitting to keep his ego warm.

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.

It’s such a stupid question, in my opinion. 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...

But I was afraid of the questions (much more than the accusations) you might both put to me.