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"Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are... Sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God."
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"Oh, how clearly I see your faults! Such distinctly highlighted flaws; it's as if the sun and moon mean to keep them illuminated in my eyes. My mind is quick to spell out a simple remedy for those defects. But alas, poor me! My own faults-which I only assume to have because all do-are blurred and obscured by a mental fog. I've no eyes with which to gaze back at myself. The sun and moon refuse their illumination, and my mind offers no sure elixir but a complex recipe scribbled in foreign words I scarcely comprehend."
"I put myself and all the members of Congress in the same boat of things that could have been done better."
"If there is wrong [ill] on the inside, the outside will appear wrong. Therefore, you should inquire within 'why am I bothered, when others are not? So there must be wrong within me only."
"I grab the pillows off the bed and chuck them at the reflection in the mirror of the girl I no longer know. I watch as the girl in the mirror stares back at me, sobbing pathetically. The weakness in her tears infuriates me."
"This has to be the most self-centered thing I've ever said, but no, I think you just wanted to vex me."
"No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to remind myself what an asshole I was?"
"When we constantly meditate on another's faults, it is because we are neglecting our own unhealed wounds."
"Oh yes, I am frequently driven to an enraged frenzy by the blatantly crass actions of others. But to be painfully honest, that anger is much less driven by the reality of their actions and far more fueled by the realization that everything I am is everything that I hate in them."
"Everything that goes into my mouth seems to make me fat, everything that comes out of my mouth embarrasses me."
Explore more quotes by J.D. Salinger
"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."
"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."
"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 don't think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while-just once in a while-there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned!"
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