He was one of those guys that think they're being a pansy if they don't break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you. God I hate… - J. D. Salinger

I was not only twenty-three, but a conspicuously retarded twenty-three.

The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has — I'm not kidding.

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.