Top 500 J.D. Salinger Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Sleep tight, ya morons!”

— J.D. Salinger

52. “This is God’s universe, buddy, not yours, and he has the final say about what’s ego and what isn’t.”

— J.D. Salinger

53. “Let’s just try to have a marvelous time this weekend. I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible. Especially me. I love you.”

— J.D. Salinger

54. “Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles.”

— J.D. Salinger

55. “That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any.”

— J.D. Salinger

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

— J.D. Salinger

57. “There’s a marvelous peace in not publishing, there’s a stillness. When you publish, the world thinks you owe something. If you don’t publish, they don’t know what you’re doing. You can keep it for yourself.”

— J.D. Salinger

58. “Don’t hate me because I can’t remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else.”

— J.D. Salinger

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

— J.D. Salinger

60. “I mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them losing their brains. You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn’t any brains. -Holden Caulfield.”

— J.D. Salinger

61. “In every school I’ve gone to, all the athletic bastards stick together.”

— J.D. Salinger

62. “Do it for the fat lady!”

— J.D. Salinger

63. “If you’re not in the mood, you can’t do that stuff right.”

— J.D. Salinger

64. “There are still a few men who love desperately.”

— J.D. Salinger

65. “People always clap for the wrong reasons.”

— J.D. Salinger

66. “The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I’m not kidding.”

— J.D. Salinger

67. “Sometimes I see me dead in the rain.”

— J.D. Salinger

68. “Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?”

— J.D. Salinger

69. “And I can’t be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.”

— J.D. Salinger

70. “It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.”

— J.D. Salinger

71. “I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I’m crazy. I swear to God I am.”

— J.D. Salinger

72. “You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.”

— J.D. Salinger

73. “Quelli che mi lasciano proprio senza fiato sono i libri che quando li hai finiti di leggere e tutto quel che segue vorresti che l’autore fosse tuo amico per la pelle e poterlo chiamare al telefono tutte le volte che ti gira.”

— J.D. Salinger

74. “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?”

— J.D. Salinger

75. “It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn’t, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world.”

— J.D. Salinger

76. “Are all your stars shining?”

— J.D. Salinger

77. “She was wearing a canary-yellow two-piece bathing suit, one piece of which she would not actually be needing for another nine or ten years.”

— J.D. Salinger

78. “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.”

— J.D. Salinger

79. “I’m not going to bed after all. Somebody around here hath murdered sleep. Good for him.”

— J.D. Salinger

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

— J.D. Salinger

81. “You’d better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time You turn around. I know what I’m talking about. You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze In this goddam phenomenal world.”

— J.D. Salinger

82. “I’ve never seen such a bunch of apple-eaters.”

— J.D. Salinger

83. “It’s not too bad when the sun’s out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.”

— J.D. Salinger

84. “Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.”

— J.D. Salinger

85. “I love you to pieces, distraction, etc.”

— J.D. Salinger

86. “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.”

— J.D. Salinger

87. “Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.”

— J.D. Salinger

88. “Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.”

— J.D. Salinger

89. “Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”

— J.D. Salinger

90. “Don’t tell people what you are thinking, or you will miss them terribly when you are away.”

— J.D. Salinger

91. “I’ve survived a lot of things, and I’ll probably survive this.”

— J.D. Salinger

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

— J.D. Salinger

93. “I prayed for the city to be cleared of people, for the gift of being alone – a-l-o-n-e: which is the one New York prayer that rarely gets lost or delayed in channels, and in no time at all everything I touched turned to solid loneliness.”

— J.D. Salinger

94. “So long, crumb-bum.”

— J.D. Salinger

95. “It’s history. It’s poetry.”

— J.D. Salinger

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

— J.D. Salinger

97. “Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew – knew – that we’re carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we’re all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?”

— J.D. Salinger

98. “I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life.”

— J.D. Salinger

99. “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.”

— J.D. Salinger

100. “Each of his phrases was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey.”

— J.D. Salinger