Ryan Strodtbeck > Ryan's Quotes

“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. I know it's crazy.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“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.”
― J.D. Salinger

“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“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."

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.”
― J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“This is a people shooting hat," I said. "I shoot people in this hat.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“If I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game's two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It's just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One