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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
True
Plainly
Chooses
Material
Materials
Poet
Choice
Choices
More quotes by J. D. Salinger
I was surrounded by phonies...They were coming in the goddam window.
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 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
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
The sentence im reading is terrific.
J. D. Salinger
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
There isn't anyone anywhere who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.
J. D. Salinger
Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.
J. D. Salinger
It happens to be one of those days when I see everybody in the family, including myself, through the wrong end of a telescope.
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
We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound.
J. D. Salinger
I am always saying Glad to've met you to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.
J. D. Salinger
People are always ruining things for you.
J. D. Salinger
Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a toilet seat.
J. D. Salinger
Don't tell people what you are thinking, or you will miss them terribly when you are away.
J. D. Salinger
All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
J. D. Salinger
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
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
And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.
J. D. Salinger
People never notice anything.
J. D. Salinger
