Book: The Catcher In The Rye

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By J.D. Salinger

Summary

A mediocre book about an edgy teenager named Holden Caulfield. He does not give a damn about things, and gets expelled from his school because of low grades. After killing some time in his dormitory, and fighting with his roommate, he decides to leave the dorm before the term's ending. He does not want his family to know he failed, so wanders around in his home town New York and kills some more time in there. He does not like anything and constantly feels depressed, and that's annoying.

You can live a fulfilled life without reading this book.

Highlights

P.002: The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has.

P.002: I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. 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-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.

P.005: "Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."

  • It is survival.

P.006: ..."Absolutely nothing," he said over again. That's something that drives me crazy. When people say something twice that way, after you admit it the first time...

  • Wow, he's really an annoying teenager.

P.011: He kept standing there. He was exactly the kind of a guy that wouldn't get out of your light when you asked him to. He'd do it, finally, but it took him a lot longer if you asked him to.

  • Sonuvabitch, you should brush your teeth regularly.

P.015: "Hey," Stradlater said. "Wanna do me a big favor?"
"What?" I said. Not too enthusiastic. He was always asking you to do him a big favor. You take a very handsome guy, or a guy that thinks he's a real hot-shot, and they're always asking you to do them a big favor. Just because they're crazy about themself, they think you're crazy about them, too, and that you're just dying to do them a favor. It's sort of funny, in a way.

P.016: ...He gave out a big yawn while he said that. Which is something that gives me a royal pain in the ass. I mean if somebody yawns right while they're asking you to do them a goddam favor.

P.019: We always had the same meal on Saturday nights at Pencey. It was supposed to be a big deal, because they gave you steak. I'll bet a thousand bucks the reason they did that was because a lot of guys' parents came up to school on Sunday, and old Thurmer probably figured everybody's mother would ask their darling boy what he had for dinner last night, and he'd say, "Steak." What a racket.

P.021: He was a virgin if ever I saw one. I doubt if he ever even gave anybody a feel.

  • He's literally me, fr fr...
  • He had a brother named Allie, but he is dead a long time ago.

P.025: I'd only been in about two fights in my life, and I lost both of them.

P.027: Most guys at Pencey just talked about having sexual intercourse with girls all the time.

  • It is a shame that they do not have anything else to talk to.

P.034: Sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God I don't.

  • After he fights with Stradlater, he decides to leave the school and the dormitory early, and decides to stay in a hotel.

P.036: You should see her. You never saw a little kid so pretty and smart in your whole life. She's really smart. I mean she's had all A's ever since she started school. As a matter of fact, I'm the only dumb one in the family. My brother D.B.'s a writer and all, and my brother Allie, the one that died, that I told you about, was a wizard. I'm the only really dumb one.

P.040: 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.

P.040: Some people you shouldn't kid, even if they deserve it.

P.041: Every time I'd ask her something, she said "What?" That can get on your nerves after a while.

P.042: Sometimes I think they'd like it if you kidded them--in fact, I know they would--but it's hard to get started, once you've known them a pretty long time and never kidded them.

P.043: I never did find out what the hell was the matter. Some girls you practically never find out what's the matter.

  • After some time, he gets bored in the hotel, and decides to go to a night club.

P.047: You could tell she thought it was a big deal, his being in Hollywood. Almost everybody does. Mostly people who've never read any of his stories. It drives me crazy, though.

P.047: Then she left. The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to've met each other. Which always kills me. 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.

P.054: If you want to know the truth, I can't even stand ministers. The ones they've had at every school I've gone to, they all have these Holy Joe voices when they start giving their sermons. God, I hate that. I don't see why the hell they can't talk in their natural voice. They sound so phony when they talk.

P.056: "Hey, Maurice. Want me to get his
wallet?" she said. "It's right on the wutchamacallit." "Yeah, get it." "Leave my wallet alone!"

  • I hate bullies.

P.056: The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding.

  • True.

P.061: Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.

P.062: He and his wife were just walking along, talking, not paying any attention to their kid. The kid was swell. He was walking in the street, instead of on the sidewalk, but right next to the curb. He was making out like he was walking a very straight line, the way kids do, and the whole time he kept singing and humming. I got up closer so I could hear what he was singing. He was singing that song, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." He had a pretty little voice, too. He was just singing for the hell of it, you could tell.

P.064: She was a very nice, polite little kid. God, I love it when a kid's nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or something. Most kids are. They really are.

P.068: You never saw so many phonies in all your life, everybody smoking their ears off and talking about the play so that everybody could hear and know how sharp they were.

  • Lol.

P.073: 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.

  • Dunno man.

P.075: You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart. I'm not kidding.

P.076: 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, I swear to God I will.

P.076: They used to have these two French babes, Tina and Janine, come out and play the piano and sing about three times every night. One of them played the piano--strictly lousy--and the other one sang, and most of the songs were either pretty dirty or in French.

  • Dirty or dirty, you say?

P.079: He always wanted everybody to go back to their own room and shut up when he was finished being the big shot. The thing he was afraid of, he was afraid somebody'd say something smarter than he had. He really amused me.

P.084: He didn't know what the hell I was talking about, so all he said was "Oh" and took me up. Not bad, boy. It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.

P.091: "You don't like anything that's happening."
It made me even more depressed when she said that.

  • But that's true.

P.093: "I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said. "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'd 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. I know it's crazy."

P.099: 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.

P.101: "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."

P.102: "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." ... "I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with--which, unfortunately, is rarely the case--tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And--most important--nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker."

"Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."

P.102: Then, all of a sudden, I yawned. What a rude bastard, but I couldn't help it!

P.107: 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 goddam 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.

P.108: You hate to tell new stuff to somebody around a hundred years old. They don't like to hear it.

P.110: 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 "Fuck 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 "Fuck you." I'm positive, in fact.

P.110: I'd have this rule that nobody could do anything phony when they visited me. If anybody tried to do anything phony, they couldn't stay.