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J.D. Salinger

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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 lose a minute. Not you.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has — I'm not kidding.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'

Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'

The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.
From Nine Stories
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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. I’m feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I’d give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.
From Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
From Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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.
From Nine Stories
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
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 I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. 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.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope
Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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 I will.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
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.
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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 goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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 to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
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 part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way.
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
Oh, God, if I'm anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I think people are plotting to make me happy.
From Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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.
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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 and creative to begin with--which, unfortunately, is rarely the case--tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are MEREly brilliant and creative.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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 wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned!
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in the pool of autumn twilight. She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
From A Girl I Knew
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
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 I know? I swear it's a stupid question.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
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 lose a minute. Not you.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has — I'm not kidding.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'

Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'

The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.
From Nine Stories
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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. I’m feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I’d give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.
From Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
From Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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.
From Nine Stories
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
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 I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. 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.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope
Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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 I will.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
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.
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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 goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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 to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
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 part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way.
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
Oh, God, if I'm anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I think people are plotting to make me happy.
From Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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.
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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 and creative to begin with--which, unfortunately, is rarely the case--tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are MEREly brilliant and creative.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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 wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned!
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in the pool of autumn twilight. She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
From A Girl I Knew
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
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 I know? I swear it's a stupid question.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
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 lose a minute. Not you.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has — I'm not kidding.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
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, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'

Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'

The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.
From Nine Stories
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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. I’m feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I’d give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.
From Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
From Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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.
From Nine Stories
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
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 I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. 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.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Hope
Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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 I will.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
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.
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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 goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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 to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
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 part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way.
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
Oh, God, if I'm anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I think people are plotting to make me happy.
From Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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.
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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 and creative to begin with--which, unfortunately, is rarely the case--tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are MEREly brilliant and creative.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
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 wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned!
From Franny and Zooey
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Funny
The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in the pool of autumn twilight. She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
From A Girl I Knew
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
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 I know? I swear it's a stupid question.
From The Catcher in the Rye
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
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