Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

• If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything.
• I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.
• There's no keeping a born scholar ignorant.
• Act when and where you want to, since you feel you must, but do it with all your might.
• Enlightenment's supposed to come with the prayer, not before it.
• I'm sick to death of being the heavy in everybody's life.
• Knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time!
• There are nice things in the world-and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked.
• There isn't any prayer in any religion in the world that justifies piousness.
• Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew--knew--that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?
• The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I'm talking about. You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.
• An artists's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.

5/1/2011