28 Striking Quotes from The Catcher in the Rye

I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.Chapter 1

Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.Chapter 2

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.Chapter 2

People always think something’s all true.Chapter 2

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.Chapter 2

Grand. There’s a word I really hate. It’s a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.Chapter 2

I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.Chapter 3

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.Chapter 3

All morons hate it when you call them a moron.Chapter 6

Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.Chapter 7

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 half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.Chapter 10

People always clap for the wrong things.Chapter 12

I’m 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.Chapter 12

I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.Chapter 16

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.Chapter 16

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.Chapter 17

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.Chapter 17

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.Chapter 18

Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.Chapter 20

It’s not too bad when the sun’s out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.Chapter 20

It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.Chapter 21

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.Chapter 22

Lots of time you don’t know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn’t interest you most.Chapter 24

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.Chapter 24

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.Chapter 24

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.Chapter 25

That’s the whole trouble. 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.Chapter 25

Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.Chapter 26