J. D. Salinger
J. D. Salinger
Jerome David Salingerwas an American writer who won acclaim early in life. He led a very private life for more than a half-century. He published his final original work in 1965 and gave his last interview in 1980...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 January 1919
CountryUnited States of America
new-york prayer loneliness
I prayed for the city to be cleared of people, for the gift of being alone—a-l-o-n-e: which is the one New York prayer that rarely gets lost or delayed in channels, and in no time at all everything I touched turned to solid loneliness.
prayer mean thinking
Don't you think I have sense enough to worry about my motives for saying the prayer? That's exactly what's bothering me so. Just because I'm choosy about what I want - in this case, enlightenment or peace, instead or money or prestige or game or any of those things, doesn't mean I'm not as egotistical and self-seeking as everybody else. If anything, I'm more so!
jesus prayer grandfather
If you're going to say the Jesus Prayer, at least say it to Jesus, and not to St. Francis and Seymour and Heidi's grandfather all wrapped up in one.
everybody goes phase phases
I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?
bad care hanging hate leave leaving left mean places sad schools trying
What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by, or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.
fed lousy mean scared unless
Did you ever get fed up? I said. “I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something?
designed environment fall falling hear himself hit horrible keeps looking man men permitted riding special supply time
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.
people plotting suspect
I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
nice two freak
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.
morning mistake nice
Zooey said... It would be very nice to come home and be in the wrong house. To eat dinner with the wrong people by mistake, sleep in the wrong bed by mistake, and kiss everybody good-bye in the morning thinking they were your own family.
cities whole
She was there, and she was the whole city, and that’s that.
men enormous-quantities style
Tilting his head back he slowly released an enormous quantity of smoke from his mouth and drew it up through his nostrils. He continued to smoke in this "French-inhale" style. Very probably, it was not part of the sofa vaudeville of a showoff but, rather, the private, exposed achievement of a young man who, at one time or another, might have tried shaving himself left-handed.
telescopes one-of-those-days ends
It happens to be one of those days when I see everybody in the family, including myself, through the wrong end of a telescope.
reading book writing
You think of the book you'd most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.