The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, is a story about a 16-year-old boy named Holton Caulfield in the 1950s.
Holton is about to be expelled from Pency after failing three other schools.
It’s a few days before Christmas break, and his family doesn’t know he’s being expelled yet.
Rather than tell his family, he decides to go to Manhattan, where his family lives, and spend a few days in a hotel. But everything goes wrong.
After a wild adventure of pain and disappointment, Holton runs away. Can the one person he cares about, his little sister, keep him from leaving?
The Catcher in the Rye Quotes With Page Numbers
“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, if you want to know the truth.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 1, Page 3
“I was trying to feel some kind of good-bye. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t you feel even worse.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 1, Page 7
“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.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 1, Page 8
“I don’t even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it.”
~J.D. Salinger , The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 1, Page 8
“Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rule.”
Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.”
Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right-I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.”
~J. D. Salinger, The Catcher In The Rye, Mr. Spencer and Holden Caulfield, Chapter 2, Pages 12, 13
“People never notice anything.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 2, Page 13
“It’s partly true, too, but it isn’t all true. People always think something’s all true.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 2, Page 13
“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.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 2, Page 13
“Grand. There’s a word I really hate. It’s a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 2, Page 14
“That’s something that drives me crazy. When people say something twice that way, after you admit it the first time.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 2, Page 15
“You can’t stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 2, Page 16
“I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 2, Page 18
“I’m just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don’t they?”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 2, Page 21
“I’d never yell, “Good luck!” at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 2, Page 21
“I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 3, Page 22
“I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot. ”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 3, Page 24
“What I like best is a book that’s at least funny once in awhile.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 3, Page 25
“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, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 3, Page 25
“I can be quite sarcastic when I’m in the mood.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 3, Page 28
“”This is a people shooting hat,” I said. “I shoot people in this hat.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 3, Page 30
“Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 4, Page 44
“He always had to know who was going. I swear, if that guy was shipwrecked somewhere, and you rescued him in the…boat, he’d want to know who the guy that was rowing it before he’d even get in.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 5, Page 47
“My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder’s mitt. he was left handed. The thing that was descriptive about it though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he’d have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up to bat. He’s dead now.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 5, Page 49
“People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily,…,and he had very red hair.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 5, Page 50
“Get your dirty stinking moron knees off my chest.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 6, Page 57
“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 6, Page 57
“That’s the trouble with all you morons. You never want to discuss anything. That’s the way you can always tell a moron. They never want to discuss anything intellig-”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 6, Page 58
“Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 7, Page 67
“Sleep tight, ya morons!”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 7, Page 68
“Women kill me. They really do. I don’t mean I’m oversexed or anything like that—although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They’re always leaving their…bags out in the middle of the aisle.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 8, Page 70
“Oh how nice!” the lady said. But not corny. She was just nice & all. “I must tell Ernest we met,” she said. “May I ask your name, dear?”
“Rudolf Schmidt,” I told her. I didn’t feel like giving her my whole life history. Rudolf Schmidt was the name of the janitor of our dorm.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield and Ernest Morrow’s mother, Chapter 8, Page 71
“Mothers are all slightly insane.”
~J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 8, Page 72
“I think if you don’t really like a girl, you shouldn’t horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you’re supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It’s really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 9, Page 81
“It’s really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes.”
~J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 9, Page 81
“Sex is something I really don’t understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are… Sex is something I just don’t understand.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 9, Page 82
“She’s quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny. I watched her once from the window when she was crossing over Fifth Avenue to go to the park, and that’s what she is, roller-skate skinny. You’d like her.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 10, Page 88
“In New York, boy, money really talks – I’m not kidding.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 10, Page 90
“That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls…They can drive you crazy. They really can.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 10, Page 95
“I thought the two ugly ones were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could tell neither one of them wanted to look like the other one, and you couldn’t blame them, but it was very amusing anyway.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 10, Page 96
“Some people you shouldn’t kid, even if they deserve it.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 10, Page 96
“There isn’t a nightclub in the world that you can sit in for a long time unless you can at least buy some liquor and get drunk. Or unless you’re with some girl that really knocks you out.”
~J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 10, Page 98
“I knew her like a book. I really did. I mean, besides checkers, she was quite fond of all athletic sports, and after I got to know her, the whole summer long we played tennis together almost every morning and golf almost every afternoon. I really got to know her quite intimately. I don’t mean it was anything physical or anything―it wasn’t―but we saw each other all the time. You don’t always have to get too sexy to get to know a girl.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, about Jane Gallagher by Holden Caulfield, Chapter 11, Page 99
“She was always reading, and she read very good books.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, about Jane Gallagher by Holden Caulfield, Chapter 11, Page 100
“I wouldn’t exactly describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out, though.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, about Jane Gallagher by Holden Caulfield, Chapter 11, Page 100
“My mother didn’t think Jane was pretty, even. I did, though. I just liked the way she looked, that’s all.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, about Jane Gallagher by Holden Caulfield, Chapter 11, Page 101
“Some girls you practically never find out what’s the matter.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 11, Page 103
“She was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls if you hold hands with them, their … hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hand all the time, as if they were afraid they’d bore you or something. Jane was different. We’d get into a … movie or something, and right away we’d start holding hands, and we wouldn’t quit till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a big deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 11, Page 103
“I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 11, Pages 104-05
“New York’s terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 12, Page 106
“Listen,” he said. “If you was a fish, Mother Nature’d take care of you, wouldn’t she? Right? You don’t think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?”
No, but–”
You’re … right they don’t”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Horwitz, Chapter 12, Page 109
“People always clap for the wrong reasons.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 12, Page 110
“I was surrounded by jerks. I’m not kidding.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 12, Page 111
“Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 12, Page 111
“He was one of those guys that think they’re being a pansy if they don’t break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you. God I hate that stuff.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 12, Page 113
“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.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 12, Page 114
“People are always ruining things for you.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 12, Page 114
“Sometimes you get tired of riding in taxicabs the same way you get tired riding in elevators. All of a sudden, you have to walk, no matter how far or how high up.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 13, Page 115
“It’s no fun to be yellow. Maybe I’m not all yellow. I don’t know. I think maybe I’m just partly yellow and partly the type that doesn’t give much of a damn if they lose their gloves. One of my troubles is, I never care too much when I lose something – it used to drive mother crazy when I was a kid. Some guys spend days looking for something they’ve lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I’d care too much. Maybe that’s why I’m partly yellow. It’s no excuse, though. It really isn’t. What you should be is not yellow at all.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 13, Page 117
“I got up and went over and looked out the window. I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 13, Page 118
“That’s the whole trouble. When you’re feeling very depressed, you can’t even think.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 13, Page 119
“I always pick a gorgeous time to fall over a suitcase or something.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 13, Page 122
“I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn’t do it. I can’t always pray when I feel like it. In the first place, I’m sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don’t care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 14, Page 130
“… movies. They can ruin you. I’m not kidding”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 14, Page 136
“I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would’ve done it, too, if I’d been sure somebody’d cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn’t want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in The Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 14, Page 136
“I used to think she was quite intelligent , in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about all those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they’re really stupid or not.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 15, Pages 138, 139
“She gave me a pain in the ass, but she was very good looking.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 15, Page 139
“…money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 15, Page 147
“That’s what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch. It mad me so damn sad when I thought about it, their never going anywhere swanky for lunch or anything. I knew it wasn’t too important, but it made me sad anyway.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 16, Page 149
“If a body catch a body coming through the rye.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, a kid singing, Chapter 16, Page 150
“I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 16, Page 152
“It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn’t, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 16, Page 156
“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and they’re pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’s be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you’d be so much older or anything. It wouldn’t be that, exactly. You’d just be different, that’s all. You’d have an overcoat this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you’d have a new partner. Or you’d have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you’d heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you’d just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you’d be different in some way—I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 16, Page 158
“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.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 16, Page 158
“Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs, girls that looked like swell girls, girls that looked like they’d be bitches if you knew them. It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them. When they got out of school and college, I mean. You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys. Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their … cars. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that are very mean. Guys that never read books. Guys that are very boring— But I have to be careful about that. I mean about calling certain guys bores. I don’t understand boring guys. I really don’t.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 17, Pages 160, 161
“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 secretly all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 17, Page 161
“If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late?”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 17, Page 162
“I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I’m crazy. I swear to God I am.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 17, Page 163
“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.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 17, Page 164
“Did you ever get fed up?’ I said. ‘I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something?”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 17, Page 169
“If you weren’t around, I’d probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some…place. You’re the only reason I’m around, practically.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 17, Page 170
“That’s the terrible part. I swear to God I’m a madman.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 17, Page 174
“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.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 17, Page 174
“Every time you mention some guy that’s strictly a bastard— very mean, or very conceited and all— and when you mention it to the girl, she’ll tell you he has an inferiority complex. Maybe he has, but that still doesn’t keep him from being a bastard, in my opinion.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 18, Page 176
“The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they’ll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don’t like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they’ll say he’s conceited. Even smart girls do it.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 18, Page 176
“…What gets me about D.B., though, he hated the war so much, and yet he got me to read this book A Farewell to Arms last summer. He said it was so terrific. That’s what I can’t understand. It had this guy in it named Lieutenant Henry that was supposed to be a nice guy and all. I don’t see how D.B. could hate the Army and war and all so much and still like a phony like that. I mean, for instance, I don’t see how he could like a phony like that and still like that one by Ring Lardner, or that other one he’s so crazy about, The Great Gatsby. D.B. got sore when I said that, and said I was too young and all to appreciate it, but I don’t think so. I told him I liked Ring Lardner and The Great Gatsby and all. I did, too. I was crazy about The Great Gatsby. Old Gatsby. Old sport. That killed me.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 18, Pages 182, 183
“Anyway, I’m sort of glad they’ve got the atomic bomb invented. If there’s ever another war, I’m going to sit right the hell on top of it. I’ll volunteer for it…”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 18, Page 183
“If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 19, Page 185
“These intellectual guys don’t like to have an intellectual conversation with you unless they’re running the whole thing.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 19, Page 191
“When you’re dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a … cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 20, Page 201
“When the weather’s nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie’s grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don’t enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn’t too bad when the sun was out, but twice—twice—we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That’s what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner—everybody except Allie. I couldn’t stand it. I know it’s only his body and all that’s in the cemetery, and his soul’s in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn’t stand it anyway. I just wished he wasn’t there.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 20, Page 202
“It’s not too bad when the sun’s out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 20, Page 202
“It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.”
~J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 21, Page 205
“It’s funny. You take adults, they look lousy when they’re asleep and they have their mouths way open, but kids don’t. Kids look alright. They can even have spit all over the pillow and they still look alright.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 21, Page 207
“Boy, did he depress me! I don’t mean he was a bad guy- he wasn’t. But you don’t have to be bad guy to depress somebody- you can be a good guy and do it.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 22, Page 219
“I know he’s dead! Don’t you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can’t I? Just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them, for God’s sake — especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that’re alive and all.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 22, Pages 222, 223
“People never think anything is anything really. I’m getting … sick of it.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 22, Page 223
“Lawyers are alright, I guess — but it doesn’t appeal to me”, I said. “I mean they’re alright if they go around saving innocent guys’ lives all the time, and like that, but you don’t do that kind of stuff if you’re a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys’ lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys’ lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the … trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren’t being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn’t.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 22, Page 223
“if somebody at least listens, it’s not too bad”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 22, Page 224
“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.”
~J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 22, Pages 224, 225
“That’s something that annoys the hell out of me- I mean if somebody says the coffee’s all ready and it isn’t”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 24, Page 239
“ …I like it when somebody gets excited about something.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 24, Page 240
“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.”
~J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Cualfield, Chapter 24, Page 240
“People are mostly hot to have a discussion when you’re not.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 24, Page 243
“This fall I think you’re riding for—it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Mr. Antolini, Chapter 24, Pages 243, 244
“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.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Mr. Antolini, Chapter 24, Page 244
“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.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Mr. Antolini, Chapter 24, Page 245
“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, 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.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Mr. Antolini, Chapter 24, Page 246
“Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it will begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t. After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that won’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Mr. Antolini, Chapter 24, Page 247
“I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people’s cars. I didn’t care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn’t know me and I didn’t know anybody. I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any … stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they’d have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They’d get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I’d be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody’d think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they’d leave me alone.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 25, Pages 257, 258
“You hate to tell new stuff to somebody around a hundred years old. They don’t like to hear it.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 25, Pages 261, 262
“If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the “F*** you” signs in the world. It’s impossible.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 25, Page 262
“when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “F*** you” right under your nose.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 25, Page 264
“You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “F*** you” right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it’ll say “Holden Caulfield” on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it’ll say “F*** you.” I’m positive, in fact.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 25, Page 264
“That’s depressing, when somebody says “please” to you.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 25, Page 273
“Then the carousel started, and I watched her go round and round…All the kids tried to grap for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she’s fall off the … horse, but I didn’t say or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it is bad to say anything to them.”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher In The Rye, about Phoebe by Holden Caulfield, Chapter 25, Pages 273, 274
“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody”
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, Chapter 26, Page 277
I felt so lonesome all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead. page number.
This quote from The Catcher in the Rye is on page 118, chapter 13.
Catcher In the Rye museum quote page number
The Catcher in the Rye museum quote is on page 158, chapter 16.