J. D. Salinger Quotes

American - Novelist January 1, 1919 - January 27, 2010

I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

J. D. Salinger

I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

J. D. Salinger

I'm aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf, out of their reach.

J. D. Salinger

Mothers are all slightly insane.

J. D. Salinger

I'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm doing is trying to protect myself and my work.

J. D. Salinger

How long should a man's legs be? Long enough to touch the ground.

J. D. Salinger

He had a theory, Walt did, that the religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sics on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world.

J. D. Salinger

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.

J. D. Salinger

I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.

J. D. Salinger