J. D. Salinger

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

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. That's how I feel.

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

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

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

People never believe you.

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.

They didn't act like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to explain. They acted more like they knew they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good.

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.

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

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

There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.

I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

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 friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

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

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.

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

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

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.

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

People never notice anything.

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

How long should a man's legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.

There's no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It's all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.