One day a long time from now you’ll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say about you. That’s when you’ll finally produce the work you’re capable of.
The world is full of actors pretending to be human
Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
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. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.
Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.
She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door.
I privately say to you, old friend… please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parentheses: (((()))).
All morons hate it when you call them a moron.
I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.
I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.
Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly
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 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.
It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.
Oh, this happiness is strong stuff.
Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They’re always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
I’m up to my ears in unwritten words.
I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.
You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.
If you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.
Listen, if you’re not going to be a nun or something, you might as well laugh.
An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.
The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.
