47 quotes
She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
A Girl I Knew (1948)
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.
Franny and Zooey (1961)
How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don't even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose?
Franny and Zooey (1961)
Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
Teddy (1953)
Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963)
There's no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It's all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.
The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963)
I'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm doing is trying to protect myself and my work.
Jesus realized there is no separation from God.
Franny and Zooey (1961)
The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on Earth.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963)
There is a marvelous peace in not publishing.
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.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963)
Life is a gift horse in my opinion.
Nine Stories (1953)
How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person on the other end shouts back "What?"
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963)
For joy, apparently, it was all Franny could do to hold the phone, even with both hands.
Franny and Zooey (1961)
The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect, than facts even usually do.
Franny and Zooey (1961)
I remember wanting to do something about that enormous-faced wristwatch she was wearing — perhaps suggest that she try wearing it around her waist.
Nine Stories (1953)
"If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable."
Nine Stories (1953)
If sentiment doesn't ultimately make fibbers of some people, their natural abominable memories almost certainly will.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963)
I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963)