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.

I still think that, in a way, I can’t get past half my childhood dogmas.

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

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.