J. D. Salinger: I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and sometim...

It's one of those places that are supposed to be very sophisticated and all, and the phonies are coming in the window.

J. D. Salinger

phony sophisticated window

I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.

J. D. Salinger

lonesomeness lonesome felt

If a body catch a body coming through the rye.

J. D. Salinger

holden catchers body

What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would've done it, too, if I'd been sure somebody'd cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn't want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory.

J. D. Salinger

jumping suicide stupid

This is a people shooting hat," I said. "I shoot people in this hat.

J. D. Salinger

hats shooting people

My god, there's absolutely nothing tenth-rate about you, and yet you're up to your neck at this minute in tenth-rate thinking.

J. D. Salinger

necks minutes thinking

I'm beginning to feel that no author has the right to tear his characters apart if he doesn't know how, or feel that he knows how (poor sucker) to put them together again. I'm tired—my God, so tired—of leaving them all broken on the page with just 'The End' written underneath.

J. D. Salinger

together-again tired character

It was just terrible! And the worst part was, I knew what a bore I was being, I knew how I was depressing people, or even hurting their feelings- but I just couldn't stop! I just could not stop picking!

J. D. Salinger

depressing hurt people

This fall I think you're riding for—it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.

J. D. Salinger

men fall thinking

I know. I'm very hard to talk to. I realize that.

J. D. Salinger

hard realizing knows

Why are you breaking down, incidentally? I mean if you’re able to go into a collapse with all your might, why can’t you use the same energy to stay well and busy?

J. D. Salinger

energy use mean

Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a toilet seat.

J. D. Salinger

toilet-seat toilets guy

You don't always have to get too sexy to get to know a girl.

J. D. Salinger

sexy girl knows

After I go out this door, I may only exist in the minds of all my acquaintances…I may be an orange peel.

J. D. Salinger

orange mind doors

His icebergs are strange monuments with a symbol embodied in their form and their colours. They do not freeze you when you look at them, for they are not of ice, they are what Lawren Harris feels and thinks after he has contemplated them

J. D. Salinger

ice imagination thinking

It happens to be one of those days when I see everybody in the family, including myself, through the wrong end of a telescope.

J. D. Salinger

one-of-those-days telescopes ends

We’re freaks, that’s all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that’s all. We’re the tattooed lady, and we’re never going to have a minute’s peace, the rest of our lives, until everybody else is tattooed, too.

J. D. Salinger

freak nice two

I love to write and I assure you I write regularly... But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.

J. D. Salinger

pleasure want writing

I'd swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet.

J. D. Salinger

dope hate player

We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound.

J. D. Salinger

converses

I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen. Sometimes, I act a lot older than I am--I really do. But people never notice it. People never notice anything.