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...

And I can’t be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.

Sex is something I really don’t understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are… Sex is something I just don’t understand. I swear to God.

Poets are always taking the weather so personally.

Mothers are all slightly insane.

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on...

Katolikler, soyadınızı bilmeseler de, Katolik olup olmadığınızı anlamaya çalışırlar hep.

I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.”( A Boy in France: Saturday Evening Post CCXVII, March 31, 1945)

I think that one of these days,” he said, “you’re going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you’ve got to start going there. But immediately. You can’t afford to...

He once told Allie and I that if he’d had to shoot anybody, he wouldn’t’ve known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were.

This fall I think you’re riding for—it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole...

He seemed unaware of the messiness of the arrangement.

I’m a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

You ought to go to a boy’s school sometime. Try it sometime,” I said. “It’s full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to...

I’ve read this same sentence about twenty times since you came in.”Anybody else except Ackley would’ve taken the goddamn hint. Not him though…”What the hellya reading?””Goddamn book.”He shoved my book back with his hand so...

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late?

Grand. There’s a word I really hate. It’s a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.

Tenis üzerine sizinle konuşmak filan, çocuğun çok hoşuna gidiyordu, ama anlıyordunuz, bir de Katolik olsaydınız çok daha hoşuna gidecekti.

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.

I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.

Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason…Oh dare to do it Buddy! Trust your heart. You’re a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night....

An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.

I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people’s cars. I didn’t care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn’t know me...

I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

I don’t know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn’t make you happy.

Postponed pain is among the most abominable kind to experience.

Laf aramızda, sen neden sinir krizi geçiriyorsun acaba? yani, bütün gücün kuvvetinle çöküntüye uğrayabiliyorsan eğer, neden aynı enerjiyi sapasağlam ayakta kalmak için harcamıyorsun?

I think if you don’t really like a girl, you shouldn’t horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you’re supposed to like her face, and if you like her...

I think it should be done over, Buddy. …Please make peace with your wit. It’s not going to go away, Buddy. To dump it on your own advice would be as bad and unnatural as...

Bu iki rahibenin bana Katolik olup olmadığımı sormadıklarına bu nedenle memnun olmuştum. Sorsalardı, konuşmamız berbat olmazdı, ama ben de herhalde farklı davranırdım.

People always think something’s all true. I don’t give a damn, except that I get bored when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am, I really...

But I’m Crazy. I swear to God I am.

I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.

If you’re a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you’re supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you’re talking about don’t leave a single, solitary thing...

If you can’t, or won’t, think of Seymour, then you go right ahead and call in some ignorant psychoanalyst. You just do that. You just call in some analyst who’s experienced in adjusting people to...

Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and...

When you’re dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a...

They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn’t funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all...

I am a dash man and not a miler, and it is probable that I will never write a novel. So far the novels of this war have had too much of the strength, maturity...

She was around ten minutes late, as a matter of fact. I didn’t give a damn, though. All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all, showing guys on street...

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

Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?

O rahibeleri bu yüzden sevmiştim. Anlıyordunuz, her seyden önce, onlar hiç bir zaman öyle şatafatlı yerlerde yemek yemezlerdi. Onların hiç bir zaman şatafatlı bir yerde yemeğe gitmediklerini düşününce felaket üzüldüm.

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

This whole goddam house stinks of ghosts. I don’t mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one.

It’s partly true, too, but it isn’t all true. People always think something’s all true.

I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human consciousness.

I have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall. . . . The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for...

I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.

Anyway, I’m sort of glad they’ve got the atomic bomb invented. If there’s ever another war, I’m going to sit right the hell on top of it. I’ll volunteer for it, I swear to God...