| | "Holden Caulfield's opening statement." |
| | "Where I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep." |
| | "They don't do any damn more molding at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn't know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably came to Pencey that way." |
| | "You never saw anybody nod as much in your life as old Spencer did. You never knew if he was nodding a lot because he was thinking and all, or just because he was a nice old guy that didn't know his ass from his elbow." |
| | "Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules." |
| | "It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true." |
| | "Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it." |
| | "You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it." |
| | "I don't think I'll ever forgive him for reading me that crap out loud. I wouldn't've read it out loud to him if he'd written it— I really wouldn't. In the first place, I'd only written that damn note so that he wouldn't feel too bad about flunking me." |
| | "One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. They were coming in the goddam window. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer." |
| | "Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do." I thought about it for a minute. "But not too much, I guess. Not too much, I guess." |
| | "Look, sir. Don't worry about me," I said. "I mean it. I'll be all right. I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?" |
| | "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." |
| | "The book I was reading was this book I took out of the library by mistake. They gave me the wrong book, and I didn't notice it till I got back to my room. They gave me Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. I thought it was going to stink, but it didn't. It was a very good book. I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot." |
| | "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." |
| | "Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?" |
| | "Do you happen to have any cigarettes, by any chance?— Say 'no' or I'll drop dead." |
| | "She looked nice, smoking. She inhaled and all, but she didn't wolf the smoke down, the way most women around her age do. She had a lot of charm. She had quite a lot of sex appeal, too, if you really want to know." |
| | "You take a guy like Morrow that's always snapping their towel at people's asses— really trying to hurt somebody with it— they don't just stay a rat while they're a kid. They stay a rat their whole life." |
| | "I started reading this timetable I had in my pocket. Just to stop lying. Once I get started, I can go on for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours." |
| | "I thought the two ugly ones, Marty and Laverne, were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could tell neither one of them wanted to look like the other one, and you couldn't blame them, but it was very amusing anyway." |
| | "I was sorry as hell I'd kidded her. Some people you shouldn't kid, even if they deserve it." |
| | "He was one of those guys that think they're being a pansy if they don't break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you. God, I hate that stuff." |
| | "So long," I said. I didn't thank her or anything. I'm glad I didn't. |
| | "It was getting daylight outside. Boy, I felt miserable. I felt so depressed, you can't imagine. What I did, I started talking, sort of out loud, to Allie. I do that sometimes when I get very depressed." |
| | "I think any one of the Disciples would've sent him to Hell and all— and fast, too— but I'll bet anything Jesus didn't do it." |
| | "The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding." |
| | "There was this record I wanted to get for Phoebe, called 'Little Shirley Beans.' It was a very hard record to get." |
| | "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 secretly all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me." |
| | "The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it." |
| | "After the Christmas thing was over, the goddam picture started. It was so putrid I couldn't take my eyes off it." |
| | "You could tell he didn't feel like discussing anything serious with me. That's the trouble with these intellectual guys. They never want to discuss anything serious unless they feel like it." |
| | "Oh, God!" old Luce said. "Is this going to be a typical Caulfield conversation? I want to know right now." |
| | "You know what the trouble with me is? I can never get really sexy— I mean really sexy— with a girl I don't like a lot. I mean I have to like her a lot. If I don't, I sort of lose my goddam desire for her and all. Boy, it really screws up my sex life something awful. My sex life stinks." |
| | "Our foyer has a funny smell that doesn't smell like anyplace else. I don't know what the hell it is. It isn't cauliflower and it isn't perfume— I don't know what the hell it is— but you always know you're home." |
| | "You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won't wake up, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she'll hear you. She's nervous as hell. Half the time she's up all night smoking cigarettes." |
| | "People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it." |
| | "I'm not too sure old Phoebe knew what the hell I was talking about. I mean she's only a little child and all. But she was listening, at least. If somebody at least listens, it's not too bad." |
| | "That digression business got on my nerves. I don't know. The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all." |
| | Oh, sure! I like somebody to stick to the point and all. But I don't like them to stick too much to the point. I don't know. I guess I don't like it when somebody sticks to the point all the time. |
| | "When his lips sort of quit shaking a little bit, though, I liked his speeches better than anybody else's." |
| | "I'm very hard to talk to. I realize that." |
| | "I don't want to scare you," he said, "but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause." |
| | "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 know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they're always being perverty when I'm around." |
| | "I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody." |
| | "It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck you' signs in the world. It's impossible." |
| | "Then what she did— it damn near killed me— she reached in my coat pocket and took out my red hunting hat and put it on my head." |
| | "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." |