J. D. Salinger

I don't necessarily intend to publish posthumously, but I do like to write for myself.

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.

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.

Its really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs.

People never believe you.

I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.

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.

You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart.

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.

It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.

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.

He had a theory, Walt did, that the religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.

I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.

Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.

Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.

I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

How long should a man's legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.