top 10 holden caulfield-isms

The Catcher in the Rye is one of my top five favorites for sure. I’ve read it like a million times, as I am sure you have as well. Holden Caulfield kills me. I’m just kinda excited to see 10 of some of the funniest/oddest/saddest quotes all in a row. So here they are:

1.  I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible.

2.  You hate to tell new stuff to somebody about a hundred years old. They don’t like to hear it.

3.  I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. 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.

4.  The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. . . . Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.

5.  I said old Jesus probably would’ve puked if He could see it.

6.  I don’t know about bores. Maybe you shouldn’t feel too sorry if you see some swell girl getting married to them. They don’t hurt anybody, most of them, and maybe they’re secretly all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me.

7.  Our foyer has a funny smell that doesn’t smell like anyplace else. I don’t know what the hell it is. It isn’t cauliflower and it isn’t perfume— I don’t know what the hell it is— but you always know you’re home.

8.  Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.

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

10.  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. 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.