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"I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they're always being perverty when I'm around."
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"It is through experience that I have lost faith in USA law enforcement."
"No matter how kind you are, always expect a few imbeciles."
"The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has - I'm not kidding."
"All these handsome guys are the same. When they're done combing their goddam hair, they beat it on you."
"Knowing without loving is frankly dangerous for the soul and for society. You'll critique most everything you encounter and even have the hubris to call this mode of reflexive cynicism 'thinking' (whereas it's really your ego's narcissistic reaction to the moment). You'll position things to quickly as inferior or superior, 'with me' or 'against me, ' and most of the time you'll be wrong."
"Most cynics are really crushed romantics: they've been hurt, they're sensitive, and their cynicism is a shell that's protecting this tiny, dear part in them that's still alive."
"I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they're always being perverty when I'm around."
"I guess the painkillers wipe out your memory along with your ethics."
Explore more quotes by J.D. Salinger
"She gave me a pain in the ass, but she was very good looking."
"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."
"I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human consciousness."
"If you can't, or won't, think of Seymour, then you go right ahead and call in some ignorant psychoanalyst. You just do that. You just call in some analyst who's experienced in adjusting people to the joys of television, and Life magazine every Wednesday, and European travel, and the H-bomb, and Presidential elections, and the front page of the Times, and God knows what else that's gloriously normal."
"I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with - which, unfortunately, is rarely the case-tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And--most important-nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker."
"As much as anything else, it was a stare, not so paradoxically, of a privacy-lover who, once his privacy has been invaded, doesn't quite approve when the invader just gets up and leaves, one-two-three, like that."
"Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?"
"Though we've talked and talked and talked, we've all agreed not to say a word."
"I am a dash man and not a miler, and it is probable that I will never write a novel. So far the novels of this war have had too much of the strength, maturity and craftsmanship critics are looking for, and too little of the glorious imperfections which teeter and fall off the best minds. The men who have been in this war deserve some sort of trembling melody rendered without embarrassment or regret. I'll watch for that book."
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