Quote

Why are you breaking down, incidentally? I mean if you’re able to go into a collapse with all your might, why can’t you use the same energy to stay well and busy?

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
Well
Breaking
Mean
Busy
Stay
Use
Energy
Able
Wells
Incidentally
Might
Collapse

More quotes by 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's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.
J. D. Salinger
Image
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
Image
Boy, did he depress me! I don't mean he was a bad guy- he wasn't. But you don't have to be bad guy to depress somebody- you can be a good guy and do it.
J. D. Salinger
Image
Franny was staring at the little blotch of sunshine with a special intensity, as if she were considering lying down in it.
J. D. Salinger
Image
Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.
J. D. Salinger
Image
But it wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair.
J. D. Salinger
Image
In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw.
J. D. Salinger
Image
There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.
J. D. Salinger
Image
Give me a story that just makes me unreasonably vigilant. Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason.
J. D. Salinger
Image
Give me an honest con man any day.
J. D. Salinger
Image
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
Image
That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any.
J. D. Salinger
Image
I said old Jesus probably would've puked if He could see it - all those fancy costumes and all. Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am. The thing Jesus really would've liked would be the guy who plays the kettle drums in the orchestra.
J. D. Salinger
Image
I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete - that's what scares me.
J. D. Salinger
Image
I don't even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it.
J. D. Salinger
Image
I'm beginning to feel that no author has the right to tear his characters apart if he doesn't know how, or feel that he knows how (poor sucker) to put them together again. I'm tired—my God, so tired—of leaving them all broken on the page with just 'The End' written underneath.
J. D. Salinger
Image
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.
J. D. Salinger
Image
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.
J. D. Salinger
Image
The existence of God, the why of life, was all that really only a question of glands?
J. D. Salinger