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"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."
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"The perception of a child who has not yet learned to protect itself by developing the tunnel vision that keeps out ninety percent of the universe."
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Personal Development
"Instead of a criminal or a drug addict, I was looking at a boy - just a boy."
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Personal Development
"Babies smile without any reason. Be like a baby."
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Personal Development
"There is no aphrodisiac like innocence."
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Personal Development
"It is pardonable for children to yell that they believe in fairies, but it is somehow sinister when the piping note shifts from the puerile to the senile."
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Personal Development
"Something happened to you, they discovered, when you were given the unconditional love and trust of a child.You wanted to try to deserve it."
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Personal Development
"No mind seems more peaceful than the mind of a sleeping innocent child because life has not yet planted the seeds of sorrow in that mind!"
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Personal Development
"Innocence has a grace which intelligence lacks!"
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Personal Development
"You know I'm old in some ways-in others-well, I'm just a little girl. I like sunshine and pretty things and cheerfulness-and I dread responsibility."
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Personal Development
"I'd prefer you accuse my son, so he can defend his innocence rather than prolong unnecessary guilt.' (Spoken by Bracke, told by Eric)"
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Personal Development
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"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."
Creativity
"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."
Identity
"If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late?"
Social
"Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?"
Art
"She was not one for emptying her face of expression."
Expression
"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!"
Education
"Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was, in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces, a stunning and final girl."
Perception
"Though we've talked and talked and talked, we've all agreed not to say a word."
Silence
"I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can."
Love
"I'm no goddam animal. I may be a stupid, fouled-up twentieth-century son of a bitch, but I'm no animal. Don't gimme that. I'm no animal."
Morality
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