R.I.P. J.D.

J.D. Salinger is one of the most famous writers of the 20th century, known for his controversial novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger's novel has been the subject of a great deal of debate and controversy, even as it has been studied in classrooms across the U.S. Read a few of the quotes from J.D. Salinger.

• "Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it had been all week and as everyone hoped it would stay for the big weekend--the weekend of the Yale game."
  - J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
  
  
• "One night some twenty years ago, during a siege of mumps in our enormous family, my youngest sister, Franny, was moved, crib and all, into the ostensibly germ-free room I shared with my eldest brother, Seymour. I was fifteen, Seymour was seventeen. Along about two in the morning, the new roommate's crying wakened me. I lay in a still, neutral position for a few minutes, listening to the racket, till I heard, or felt, Seymour stir in the bed next to mine."
  - J.D. Salinger, "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour "
  
  
• "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
  - J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
  
  
• "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
  
  
• "An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
  - J.D. Salinger
  
  
• "How do you know what you are going to do until you do it? The answer is, you don't."
  - J.D. Salinger
  
  
• "I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy."
  - J.D. Salinger
  
  
• "I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot."
  - J.D. Salinger
  
  
• "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
  
  
• "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."
  - J.D. Salinger