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"Though we've talked and talked and talked, we've all agreed not to say a word."
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"Shut lips, sleeping faces,Every stopped machine,The dumb and littered placesWhere crowds have been:.All silences rejoice,Weep (loudly or low),Speak-but with the voiceOf whom, I do not know."

"Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts."

"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenements halls and whispered in the sounds of silence."

"I saw that she didn't want to answer that question and so I asked again: when mouths close it's because there's something important to be said."

"She was in a terrible marriage and she couldn't talk to anyone. He used to hit her, and in the beginning she told him that if it ever happened again, she would leave him. He swore that it wouldn't and she believed him. But it only got worse after that, like when his dinner was cold, or when she mentioned that she'd visited with one of the neighbors who was walking by with his dog. She just chatted with him, but that night, her husband threw her into a mirror."

"Answer only when asked, otherwise do not say anything. Don't say a thing in this world. To tell [give advice] is the biggest disease. Your beard grows without you saying anything, doesn't it?"

"Silence often speaks louder than words. To be heard is nice to be understood is divine."
Explore more quotes by J.D. Salinger


"This whole goddam house stinks of ghosts. I don't mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one."


"All these handsome guys are the same. When they're done combing their goddam hair, they beat it on you."


"Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason, Oh dare to do it, Buddy! Trust your heart. You're a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I'm feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I'd give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart."


"But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written 'fuck you' on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them- all cockeyed naturally- what it meant, and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it."


"People always think something's all true. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am, I really do. But people never notice. People never notice anything."
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