J. D. Salinger Want Quotations

It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable.

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.

When I really worry about something, I don’t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don’t go. I’m too worried to go. I don’t want to interrupt my worrying to go.

I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.

You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.

I didn't want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck.

The catcher in the rye... that's all I really want to be...

who wants flowers when youre dead? nobody.

I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you.

I love to write and I assure you I write regularly... But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.