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
reading book writing
You think of the book you'd most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.
writing heard euphemism
Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.
hate writing phony
Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.
book reading writing
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.
art writing perfection
An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.
believe writing heart
If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined.
believe responsibility writing
You can't argue with someone who believes, or just passionately suspects, that the poet's function is not to write what he must write but, rather, to write what he would write if his life depended on his taking responsibility for writing what he must in a style designed to shut out as few of his old librarians as humanly possible.
writing pleasure publishing
There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.
writing want pleasure
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.
attitude writing men
There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. ... It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I live to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure. ... I don't necessarily intend to publish posthumously, but I do like to write for myself. ... I pay for this kind of attitude. I'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm doing is trying to protect myself and my work.
writing men thinking
I don't suppose a writing man ever really gets rid of his old crocus-yellow neckties. Sooner or later, I think, they show up in his prose, and there isn't a hell of a lot he can do about it.
stars writing heart
Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?
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?
Yes. That's it. That's the document. Where did you get it?