The Catcher in the Rye

By J.D. Salinger QUOTATION: Sex is something I really don’t understand too hot…. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away.
ATTRIBUTION: The Catcher in the Rye Little, Brown 51

QUOTATION: A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn’t stink a little bit of the writer’s pride in having given up his pride.
ATTRIBUTION: The Catcher in the Rye Little, Brown 51

QUOTATION: I don’t even like old cars ... I’d rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God’s sake.
ATTRIBUTION: J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger (b. 1919), U.S. author. Holden Caulfield, in The Catcher in the Rye, ch. 17 (1951).

QUOTATION: I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all.... If they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy.
ATTRIBUTION: J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger (b. 1919), U.S. author. The narrator (Holden Caulfield), in The Catcher in the Rye, ch. 22 (1951).

QUOTATION: 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.
ATTRIBUTION: J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger (b. 1919), U.S. author. The narrator (Holden Caulfield), in The Catcher in the Rye, ch. 17 (1951).

QUOTATION: What I like best is a book that’s at least funny once in a while.... 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.
ATTRIBUTION: J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger (b. 1919), U.S. author. The narrator (Holden Caulfield), in The Catcher in the Rye, ch. 3 (1951).

QUOTATION: If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it.
ATTRIBUTION: J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger (b. 1919), U.S. author. Catcher in the Rye, ch. 1 (1951).