Literary Birthday – 1 January – J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger was born 1 January 1919, and died 27 January 2010.

10 Quotes: J.D. Salinger

1. An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.
2. There’s no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It’s all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.
3. I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.
4. It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.
5. All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
6. She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there, leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
7. Boy, 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 goddam 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.
8. The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.
9. I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
10. I love to write and I assure you I write regularly… But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.

J.D. Salinger was an American writer. He is best known for writing The Catcher in the Rye, which was a hugely popular success. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist, became an icon of adolescence, alienation, and loss. The novel still sells 250 000 copies a year. Salinger became reclusive in his later years, and published new work less frequently.

Source for Image: Wikipedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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