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The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he 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
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New York City
New York
Jerome David Salinger
Jerome Salinger
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Materials
Poet
More quotes by J. D. Salinger
It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.
J. D. Salinger
Sometimes you get tired of riding in taxicabs the same way you get tired riding in elevators. All of a sudden, you have to walk, no matter how far or how high up.
J. D. Salinger
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
You don't know how to talk to people you don't like. Don't love, really. You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes.
J. D. Salinger
The world is full of actors pretending to be human
J. D. Salinger
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
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
Each of his phrases was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey.
J. D. Salinger
I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.
J. D. Salinger
I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.
J. D. Salinger
I live alone (but catless, I'd like everybody to know).
J. D. Salinger
The connection was so bad, and I couldn’t talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back ‘What?
J. D. Salinger
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
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
Nobody who's really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies
J. D. Salinger
What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would've done it, too, if I'd been sure somebody'd cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn't want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory.
J. D. Salinger
I privately say to you, old friend... please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).
J. D. Salinger
The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.
J. D. Salinger
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
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
