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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

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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
Love
Assure
Regularly
Alone
Pleasure
Write
Left
Writing

More quotes by J. D. Salinger

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For joy, apparently, it was all Franny could do to hold the phone, even with both hands.
J. D. Salinger
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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.
J. D. Salinger
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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
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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 mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them losing their brains. You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn't any brains. -Holden Caulfield
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 live alone (but catless, I'd like everybody to know).
J. D. Salinger
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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
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I suspect that money is a far greater distraction for the artist than hunger.
J. D. Salinger
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It was just terrible! And the worst part was, I knew what a bore I was being, I knew how I was depressing people, or even hurting their feelings- but I just couldn't stop! I just could not stop picking!
J. D. Salinger
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Women kill me. They really do. I don't mean I'm oversexed or anything like that—although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They're always leaving their goddam bags out in the middle of the aisle.
J. D. Salinger
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A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn't stink a little bit of the writer's pride in having given up his pride.
J. D. Salinger
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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
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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
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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
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I know. I'm very hard to talk to. I realize that.
J. D. Salinger
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probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. how well or how badly the man actually knew the girl doesn’t necessarily affect the transformation. she was there, and she was the whole city, and that’s that
J. D. Salinger
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I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.
J. D. Salinger
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Do it for the fat lady!
J. D. Salinger
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Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?
J. D. Salinger