J. D. Salinger

“The kid was swell. He was walking in the street, instead of on the sidewalk, but right next to the curb. He was making out like he was walking a very straight line, the way kids do, and the...”

“God bless ladies with costly, tasteful clothes and touching, dirty fingernails that champion gifted, foreign poets and decorate the library in beautiful, melancholy fashion! My God, this uni...”

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

“I didn't want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck.”

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

“He had a theory, Walt did, that the religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.”

“I'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm doing is trying to protect myself and my work.”

“You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart.”

“I'm aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all m...”

“I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.”

“What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. 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...”

“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”

“I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”

“I don't necessarily intend to publish posthumously, but I do like to write for myself.”

“I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.”

“Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.”

“Some stories, my property, have been stolen. Someone's appropriated them. It's an illicit act. It's unfair. Suppose you had a coat you liked, and somebody went into your closet and stole it....”

“It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.”

“If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.”

“I’ll read my books and I’ll drink my coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt my door.”