If you haven’t already read it, studied it in school, or even heard of it before – J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is commonly thought to be one of the first ever YA novels. It follows cynical teenager Holden Caulfield as he wonders around New York City in the winter, after being expelled from another school. While it might not have the most fantastical of plots, it is very much a character study of Holden, who starts to speak to the readers in far more than just the literal way, particularly as his cynicism and depression begins to worsen, and some truths are revealed about his life.
The Catcher in the Rye is one of my favourite books, as you probably already know from my ‘Checking out the Classics’ post on the novel, but it also turns 65 this year. So don your red hunting cap, because to celebrate its anniversary I’ve picked out my top 10 quotes from the famous coming-of-age classic.
Monday montage. Catcher in the Rye. #classic #books pic.twitter.com/2k8nLfoBzY
— Ilkley Oxfam Bookshop (@IlkleyOxfamBook) March 5, 2018
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”
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“I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse.”
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“My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder’s mitt. He was left handed. The thing that was descriptive about it though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he’d have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up to bat. He’s dead now.”
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“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.
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“If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don’t watch it, you start showing off. And then you’re not as good any more.”
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“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.”
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“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. 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.”
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“Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rule.” “Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.”
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“Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right – I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.”
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“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole… Nobody’d be different… The only thing that would be different would be you.”
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“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
Have you read ‘The Catcher in the Rye’? What did you think? Do you have different favourite quotes from the book, or do you agree with my list? Let us know in the comments below!
