J. D. Salinger Quotes - Page 2

Marriage partners are to serve each other. Elevate, help, teach, strengthen each other, but above all, serve. Raise their children honorably, lovingly and with detachment. A child is a guest in the house, to be loved and respected - never possessed, since he belongs to God. How wonderful, how sane, how beautifully difficult, and therefore true. The joy of responsibility for the first time in my life.

People are always ruining things for you.

I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.

You think of the book you'd most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.

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

The existence of God, the why of life, was all that really only a question of glands?

Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.

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

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

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

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 the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

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

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

There are nice things in the world - and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked.

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.

Oh, this happiness is strong stuff.

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.

I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.

God, I wish you could have been there.

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

You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.

Why are you breaking down, incidentally? I mean if you’re able to go into a collapse with all your might, why can’t you use the same energy to stay well and busy?

Give me an honest con man any day.

I knew it wasn't too important, but it made me sad anyway.