- After I got across the road, I felt like I was sort of disappearing. It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun our or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed the road.
- It was as cold as a witch's teat... xD
- What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're done reading it, you wish that 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.
- The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to have met each other. Which always kills me. I'm always saying "glad to have met you" to someone I'm not at all glad I've met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff though.
- Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.
- ...the inside of the auditorium had such a nice smell. It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the only dry, cosy place in the world.
- The best thing though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. [...] The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way--I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.
- "You ought to go to a boys' 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 be able to buy a goddam Cadillac someday..."
- "You know what I'd like to be? I mean if I had my goddam choice?" [...] "..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'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only think I'd really like to be."
- You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart.
- Boy, 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 the goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants glowers when you're dead? Nobody.
- He was about the best teacher I ever had. [...] He was a pretty young guy, not much older than my brother D.B., and you could kid around with him without losing your respect for him.
- "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 exited and stimulated to know. Many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them--if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."
feb 10 2013 ∞
may 13 2013 +