More Quotes by J. D. Salinger
Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly
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.
Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean 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 do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.
I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.
If you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.
I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
One day a long time from now you'll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say about you. That's when you'll finally produce the work you're capable of.
I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.
