Top 500 J.D. Salinger Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. It’s not so good, that way.”

— J.D. Salinger

352. “It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer’s feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his working years.”

— J.D. Salinger

353. “You keep 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. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education, it’s history.”

— J.D. Salinger

354. “I walked down the long, wet cobblestone hill into town. I ignored the flashes of lightning all around me. They either had your number on them or they didn’t.”

— J.D. Salinger

355. “The next part I don’t remember so hot. All I know is I got up from the bed, like I was going down to the can or something, and then I tried to sock him, with all my might, right smack in the toothbrush, so it would split his goddam throat open. Only, I missed. I didn’t connect.”

— J.D. Salinger

356. “You’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior... many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now.”

— J.D. Salinger

357. “This is the squalid, or moving, part of the story, and the scene changes. The people change, too. I’m still around, but from here on in, for reasons I’m not at liberty to disclose, I’ve disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me.”

— J.D. Salinger

358. “Maybe I consistently hesitated to risk letting the thing we had together deteriorate into a romance.”

— J.D. Salinger

359. “He told me to be funny for the Fat Lady, once.”

— J.D. Salinger

360. “Then something altogether hideous happened. The thought was forced on me that no matter how coolly or sensibly or gracefully I might one day to learn to live my life, I would always at best be a visitor in a garden of enamel urinals and bedpans, with a sightless, wooden dummy-deity standing by in a marked-down rupture truss.”

— J.D. Salinger

361. “Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it will begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t. After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that won’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.”

— J.D. Salinger

362. “What I like best is a book that’s at least funny once in awhile.”

— J.D. Salinger

363. “She yelled ‘Good luck!’ at me the same way old Spencer did when I left Pencey. God, how I hate when somebody yells ‘Good luck!’ at me when I’m leaving somewhere. It’s depressing.”

— J.D. Salinger

364. “Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.”

— J.D. Salinger

365. “She’s quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny. I watched her once from the window when she was crossing over Fifth Avenue to go to the park, and that’s what she is, roller-skate skinny. You’d like her.”

— J.D. Salinger

366. “I do not willfully invite any disillusions at this point in my life. I am willing to stay in the dark.”

— J.D. Salinger

367. “If you’re a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you’re supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything.”

— J.D. Salinger

368. “Anybody over sixteen without an ulcer’s a goddamn spy.”

— J.D. Salinger

369. “When she was done whispering in the mike and being cute as hell, they’d sing a song half in English and half in French and drive all the phonies in the place mad with joy.”

— J.D. Salinger

370. “If I were God, I certainly wouldn’t want people to love me sentimentally. It’s too unreliable.”

— J.D. Salinger

371. “I remember a little dispersed band of unfamiliar faces that surreptitiously turned around, now and then, to see who was coughing.”

— J.D. Salinger

372. “I’m sorry, I’m awful, I’ve just felt so terribly destructive all week. It’s awful. I’m horrible.”

— J.D. Salinger

373. “Mother, darling, don’t yell at me. I can hear you beautifully,” said the girl.”

— J.D. Salinger

374. “How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don’t even know a cup of concentrated chicken soup when it’s right in front of your nose?”

— J.D. Salinger

375. “Ve, isin kotu tarafi da, bohem takildiginda ya da bunun gibi bir cilginlik yaptiginda, sen de herkes kadar duzene ayak uydurmus oluyorsun, sadece bicim farki var.”

— J.D. Salinger

376. “They’re not. That’s partly what’s so awful. I mean they’re not real poets. They’re just people that write poems that get published and anthologized all over the place but they’re not poets.”

— J.D. Salinger

377. “Then, as though he had suddenly become exhausted-or, rather, depleted by the demands made on him by a world greedy for the fruit of his intellect-he began to massage the side of his face with the flat of his hand, removing, with unconscious crassness, a bit of sleep from one eye.”

— J.D. Salinger

378. “A story never ends. The narrator is usually provided with a nice, artistic spot for his voice to stop, but that’s about all.”

— J.D. Salinger

379. “I began writing eight or ten words of my own on a sheet of paper, in very large letters that I could read without any trouble. I did that for over a month, filling a couple of small, dime-store writing tablets. Then suddenly I quit. For no particular reason. Chiefly, I was saddened by my own ignorance, I think. Then, too, I was a little afraid I was going blind. There’s never just one reason for anything. But, anyway, I quit.”

— J.D. Salinger

380. “A community of seriously hip observers is a scary and depressing thing.”

— J.D. Salinger

381. “Aunt – Uh – There’s a war on. Uh – I mean you’ve seen it on the newsreels. I mean you’ve heard it on the radio and all, haven’t you?”

— J.D. Salinger

382. “She looked like she might have a pretty damn good idea what bastard she was the mother of. But you can’t always tell – with somebody’s mother, I mean. Mothers are all slightly insane.”

— J.D. Salinger

383. “Certain things they should stay the way they are.”

— J.D. Salinger

384. “I wasn’t sleepy or anything, but I was feeling sort of lousy. Depressed and all. I almost wished I was dead.”

— J.D. Salinger

385. “I thought the two ugly ones were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could tell neither one of them wanted to look like the other one, and you couldn’t blame them, but it was very amusing anyway.”

— J.D. Salinger

386. “I don’t like it when it stings,′ he said. ‘Nobody does.”

— J.D. Salinger

387. “I didn’t care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn’t know me and I didn’t know anybody. I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn’t have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they’d have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They’d get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I’d be through with having conversations for the rest of my life.”

— J.D. Salinger

388. “That’s depressing, when somebody says “please” to you.”

— J.D. Salinger

389. “I’ll tell you a terrible secret – Are you listening to me? There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady.”

— J.D. Salinger

390. “Women kill me. They really do. I don’t mean I’m oversexed or anything like that – although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean.”

— J.D. Salinger

391. “Teddy looked at him directly for the first time. “Are you a poet?” he asked. “A poet?” Nicholson said. “Lord, no. Alas, no. Why do you ask?” “I don’t know. Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They’re always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.”

— J.D. Salinger

392. “You never get to sit next to the window any more when you’re married.”

— J.D. Salinger

393. “Oh, it’s lovely to see you!? Franny said as the cab moved off. ‘I’ve missed you.’ The words were no sooner out than she realized that she didn’t mean them at all.”

— J.D. Salinger

394. “I like Jesus and all, but I don’t care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible.”

— J.D. Salinger

395. “Mary Hudson waved to me. I waved back. I couldn’t have stopped myself, even if Id wanted to. Her stickwork aside, she happened to be a girl who knew how to wave to somebody from third base.”

— J.D. Salinger

396. “I’m way off. I’ll just ruin the whole weekend. Maybe there’s a trapdoor under my chair, and I’ll just disappear.”

— J.D. Salinger

397. “The thing is, it’s really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs – if yours are really good ones and theirs aren’t. You think if they’re intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don’t give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do.”

— J.D. Salinger

398. “The funny part is, I felt like marrying her the minute I saw her. I’m crazy. I didn’t even like her much, and yet all of a sudden I felt like I was in love with her and wanted to marry her. I swear to God I’m crazy. I admit it.”

— J.D. Salinger

399. “It’s nice when somebody tells you about their uncle. Especially when they start out telling you about their father’s farm and then all of a sudden get more interested in their uncle.”

— J.D. Salinger

400. “If sentiment doesn’t ultimately make fibbers of some people, their natural abominable memories almost certainly will.”

— J.D. Salinger