"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

"I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot."

"I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect."

"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."

"I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice."

"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."

"Mothers are all slightly insane."

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."

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

"And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up."

"I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it."

"Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone."

"People are always ruining things for you."

"When you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose."

"All morons hate it when you call them a moron."

"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 know it's crazy."

"If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late?"

"She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together."

"People never notice anything."

"People always clap for the wrong reasons."

"And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight."

"I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."

"If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more."

"Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it."

"Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad."

"It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road."

"The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid."

"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."

"Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do."

"I can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood."

"I love you to pieces, distraction, etc."

"I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy."

"Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions."

"Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell."

"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 can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it."

"Sleep tight, ya morons!"

"It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true."

"Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row."

"I don’t give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am - I really do - but people never notice it. People never notice anything."

"I have scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me."

"You don't know how to talk to people you don't like. Don't love, really. You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes."

"It's not too bad when the sun's out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out."

"This is a people shooting hat," I said. "I shoot people in this hat."

"I don't even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it."

"But what I mean is, lots of time you don’t know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn’t interest you most. I mean you can’t help it sometimes."

"She was not one for emptying her face of expression."

"You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world."

"Who wants flowers when youre dead? nobody."