Quote

I used to think she was quite intelligent , in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about all those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not.

J. D. Salinger

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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
Find
Takes
Play
Knew
Really
Quite
Plays
Things
Literature
Stupidity
Think
Whether
Intelligent
Thinking
Stuff
Theater
Used
Stupid
Reason
Somebody

More quotes by J. D. Salinger

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Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was, in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces, a stunning and final girl.
J. D. Salinger
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It happens to be one of those days when I see everybody in the family, including myself, through the wrong end of a telescope.
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You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart.
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If sentiment doesn't ultimately make fibbers of some people, their natural abominable memories almost certainly will.
J. D. Salinger
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I'm aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in 'The Catcher In the Rye.' Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf out of their reach.
J. D. Salinger
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Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes.
J. D. Salinger
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But where does by far the bulk, the whole ambulance load, of pain really come from? Where must it come from? Isn't the true poet or painter a seer? Isn't he, actually, the only seer we have on earth? Most apparently not the scientist, most emphatically not the psychiatrist.
J. D. Salinger
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Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.
J. D. Salinger
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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.
J. D. Salinger
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Give me an honest con man any day.
J. D. Salinger
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People never notice anything.
J. D. Salinger
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Don't hate me because I can't remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else.
J. D. Salinger
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This is God's universe, buddy, not yours, and he has the final say about what's ego and what isn't.
J. D. Salinger
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I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.
J. D. Salinger
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Are all your stars shining?
J. D. Salinger
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The sentence im reading is terrific.
J. D. Salinger
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If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me.
J. D. Salinger
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I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.
J. D. Salinger
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When I really worry about something, I don’t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don’t go. I’m too worried to go. I don’t want to interrupt my worrying to go.
J. D. Salinger
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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.
J. D. Salinger