It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.
Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.
I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.
All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
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.
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 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 my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf, out of their reach.
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.
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.
There's no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It's all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.
There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.
Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
I'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm doing is trying to protect myself and my work.
I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.