Quote

I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.

J. D. Salinger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

J. D. Salinger
Age: 91 †
Born: 1919
Born: January 1
Died: 2010
Died: January 27
Author
Novelist
Writer
New York City
New York
Jerome David Salinger
Jerome Salinger
Mute
Deaf
Pretend
Thought

More quotes by J. D. Salinger

Image
I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.
J. D. Salinger
Image
My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. he was left handed. The thing that was descriptive about it though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up to bat
J. D. Salinger
Image
I know. I'm very hard to talk to. I realize that.
J. D. Salinger
Image
Give me an honest con man any day.
J. D. Salinger
Image
I don't know about bores. Maybe you shouldn't feel too sorry if you see some swell girl getting married to them. They don't hurt anybody most of them, and maybe they're all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me.
J. D. Salinger
Image
It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.
J. D. Salinger
Image
The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.
J. D. Salinger
Image
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
Image
I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.
J. D. Salinger
Image
But I was afraid of the questions (much more than the accusations) you might both put to me.
J. D. Salinger
Image
Bessie: 'Why don't you get married?' Zooey: 'I like riding in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window anymore when you're married.
J. D. Salinger
Image
I think that one of these days, he said, you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you.
J. D. Salinger
Image
I was surrounded by phonies...They were coming in the goddam window.
J. D. Salinger
Image
She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the light bulbs.
J. D. Salinger
Image
Let's just try to have a marvelous time this weekend. I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible. Especially me. I love you.
J. D. Salinger
Image
She worries over the way her love for me comes and goes, appears and disappears. She doubts its reality simply because it isn't as steadily pleasurable as a kitten. God knows it is sad. The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on earth.
J. D. Salinger
Image
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.
J. D. Salinger
Image
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.
J. D. Salinger
Image
Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew--knew--that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?
J. D. Salinger
Image
I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.
J. D. Salinger