Quotes from J.D. Salinger

The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on earth.

No one goddamn person, of all the patronizing, fourth rate critics and column writers, had ever seen him for what he really was. A poet, for God's sake. And I mean a poet.

I happen to know, possible none better, that an ecstatically happy writing person is often a totally draining type to have around. Of course, the poets in this state are by far the most "difficulty," but even the prose writer similarly seized hasn't any real choice of behavior in decent company; divine or not, a seizure's a seizure. And while I think an ecstatically happy prose write can do many good things on the printed page - the best things, I'm frankly hoping - it's also true, and infinitely more self-evident, I suspect, that he can't be moderate or temperate or brief; he loses very nearly all his short paragraphs.