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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

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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
Scares
Compete
Scare
Opposite
Opposites
Afraid

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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.
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You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.
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Some of my best friedns are children. In fact, all of my best friends are children.
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The world is full of actors pretending to be human
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The existence of God, the why of life, was all that really only a question of glands?
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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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.
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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
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Oh, it's lovely to see you!' Franny said as the cab moved off. 'I've missed you.' The words were no sooner out than she realized that she didn't mean them at all.
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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
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People are always ruining things for you.
J. D. Salinger
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She was wearing a canary-yellow two-piece bathing suit, one piece of which she would not actually be needing for another nine or ten years.
J. D. Salinger
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His eldest sister (who modestly prefers to be identified here as a Tuckahoe homemaker) has asked me to describe him as looking like 'the blue-eyed Jewish-Irish Mohican scout who died in your arms at the roulette table at Monte Carlo.
J. D. Salinger
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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
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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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I know. I'm very hard to talk to. I realize that.
J. D. Salinger
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Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.
J. D. Salinger
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You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
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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She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.
J. D. Salinger