J. D. Salinger Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• 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

  Book, Reading, Memorable

  Catcher in the Rye (1951) ch. 3

• I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.

  J. D. Salinger

  Coffee, Book, Doors

• If there is an amateur reader still left in the world - or anybody who just reads and runs - I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children.

  J. D. Salinger

  Running, Gratitude, Children

  "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction". Book by J. D. Salinger, 1963.

• But if we come back, if German men come back, if British men come back, and Japs, and French, and all the other men, all of us talking, writing, painting, making movies of heroes, and cockroaches and foxholes and blood, then future generations will always be doomed to future Hitlers. It's never occurred to boys to have contempt for wars, to point to soldiers' pictures in history books, laughing at them. If German boys had learned to be contemptuous of violence, Hitler would have had to take up knitting to keep his ego warm.

  J. D. Salinger

  War, Book, Hero

• The rest, with very little exaggeration, was books. Meant-to-be-picked-up books. Permanently-left-behind books. Uncertain-what-to-do-with books. But books, books. Tall cases lined three walls of the room, filled to and beyond capacity. The overflow had been piled in stacks on the floor. There was little space left for walking, and none whatever for pacing.

  J. D. Salinger

  Wall, Book, Exaggeration Is

• I asked him what, if anything, got him down about teaching. He said he didn't think that anything about it got him exactly down, but there was one thing, he thought, that frightened him: reading the pencilled notations in the margins of books in the college library.

  J. D. Salinger

  Book, Teaching, Reading

  "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction". Book by J. D. Salinger, 1963.

• You think of the book you'd most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.

  J. D. Salinger

  Book, Reading, Writing

• As nearly as possible in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lima bean, I urge my editor, mentor and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius domus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.

  J. D. Salinger

  Love, Book, Artist

  "The Mistakes in This Essay Are My Own" by John Maxwell Hamilton, www.nytimes.com. April 15, 1990.

• 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

  Children, Book, My Best Friend

  "The Twentieth Century". Book by Caroline Farrar Ware, p. 429, 1972.

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