"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."
"when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose."
"If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible."
"In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw."
"I'm not trying to tell you," he said "that only educated 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."
"I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while, even if they're only scratching their arms or blowing their noses or even just giggling or something."
"I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they’re always being perverty when I’m around."
"I am 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."
"He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were."
"I always pick a gorgeous time to fall over a suitcase or something."
"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."
"If you're not inthe mood, you can't do that stuff right."
"She gave me a pain in the ass, but she was very good looking."
"Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are... Sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God."
"You ought to go to a boy's school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques."
"This fall I think you're riding for—it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started."
"I have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall. . . . The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. . . . So they gave up looking."
"It was lousy in the park. It wasn't too cold, but the sun still wasn't out, and there didn't look like there was anything in the park except dog crap and globs of spit and cigar butts from old men, and the benches all looked like they'd be wet if you sat down on them. It made you depressed, and every once in a while, for no reason, you got goose flesh while you walked. It didn't seem at all like Christmas was coming soon. It didn't seem like anything was coming."
"People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily,...,and he had very red hair."
"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."
"But I'm Crazy. I swear to God I am."
"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."
"I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth."
"These intellectual guys don't like to have an intellectual conversation with you unless they're running the whole thing."
"That's depressing, when somebody says "please" to you."