The Catcher In The Rye Quotes
"Once I get started, I can go on for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours."
"If you’re not in the mood, you can’t do that stuff right."
"You think if they’re intelligent and all, the other person, and have a good sense of humor, that they don’t give a damn whose suitcases are better, but they do."
"It’s really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs."
"It drives me crazy, though, when I’m out somewhere, I generally just eat a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk."
"If you want to know the truth, I’m a virgin. I really am."
"The thing is, most of the time when you’re coming pretty close to doing it with a girl—a girl that isn’t a prostitute or anything, I mean—she keeps telling you to stop."
"It wouldn’t have been so bad if you could both be blindfolded or something."
"That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty... you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are."
"If you’re supposed to sock somebody in the jaw, and you sort of feel like doing it, you should do it."
"I felt more depressed than sexy, if you want to know the truth."
"It made me feel sad as hell—I don’t know why exactly."
"What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window."
"It’s one of the reasons why I roomed with a stupid bastard like Stradlater."
"I hate it if I’m eating bacon and eggs or something and somebody else is only eating toast and coffee."
"It’s hard to explain. He was very smart and entertaining and all."
"It drives me crazy if somebody gets killed—especially somebody very smart and entertaining and all—and it’s somebody else’s fault."
"She certainly was nice. She reminded me a little bit of old Ernest Morrow’s mother, the one I met on the train."
"Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic."
"Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell."
"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move."
"Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs."
"I felt sorry as hell for my mother and father. Especially my mother, because she still isn't over my brother Allie yet."
"Boy, if she wants to keep a pillow over her head, she keeps it."
"She was laying there asleep, with her face sort of on the side of the pillow. She had her mouth way open. It's funny. You take adults, they look lousy when they're asleep and they have their mouths way open, but kids don't."
"People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody."
"You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart."
"I was the only guy at the bar with a bullet in their guts."
"It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
"The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them."
"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."
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
"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."