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Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction QUOTES

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction QUOTES

1 " Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason…Oh dare to do it Buddy! Trust your heart. You’re a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I’m feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I’d give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

2 " I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

3 " John Keats / John Keats / John / Please put your scarf on. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

4 " I think it should be done over, Buddy. …Please make peace with your wit. It's not going to go away, Buddy. To dump it on your own advice would be as bad and unnatural as dumping your adjectives and your adverbs because Prof. B. wants you to. What does he know about it? What do you really know about your own wit?

I've been sitting here tearing up notes to you. I keep starting to say things like 'This one is wonderfully constructed,' and 'The conversation between the two cops is terrific.' So I'm hedging. I'm not sure why. I started to get a little nervous right after you began to read. It sounded like the beginning of something your arch-enemy Bob B. calls a rattling good story. Don't you think he would call this a step in the right direction? Doesn't that worry you? Even what is funny about the woman on the back of the truck doesn't sound like something you think is funny. It sounds much more like something that you think is universally considered funny. I feel gypped. Does that make you mad? You can say our relatedness spoils my judgement. It worries me enough. But I'm also just a reader. Are you a writer or just a writer of rattling good stories. I mind getting a rattling good story from you. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

5 " Oh, God, if I'm anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I think people are plotting to make me happy. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

6 " I have scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

7 " I privately say to you, old friend... please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of early-blooming parentheses: (((()))). "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

8 " I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of the writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

9 " Give me a story that just makes me unreasonably vigilant. Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

10 " The connection was so bad, and I couldn’t talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back ‘What? "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

11 " Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

12 " She worries over the way her love for me comes and goes, appears and disappears. She doubts its reality simply because it isn't as steadily pleasurable as a kitten. God knows it is sad. The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on earth. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

13 " But guilt is guilt. It doesn't go away. It can't be nullified. It can't even be fully understood, I'm certain - it's roots run too deep into private and long-standing karma. About the only thing that saves my neck when I get to feeling this way is that guilt is an imperfect form of knowledge. Just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean that it can't be used. The hard thing to do is to put it to practical use, before it gets around to paralyzing you. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

14 " If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

15 " I live alone (but catless, I'd like everybody to know).... "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

16 " I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

17 " If or when I do start going to an analyst, I hope to God he has the foresight to let a dermatologist sit in on the consultation. A hand specialist. I have scars on my hands from touching certain people... Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me. Other things, too. Charlotte once ran away from me, outside the studio, and I grabbed her dress to stop her, to keep her near me. A yellow cotton dress I loved because it was too long for her. I still have a lemon-yellow mark on the palm of my right hand. Oh God, if I'm anything by a clincal name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

18 " Just go to bed, now. Quickly. Quickly and slowly. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

19 " Seymour once said that all we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next. Is he ever wrong? "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

20 " oh, this happiness is strong stuff. It's marvelously liberating. "

― J.D. Salinger , Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction