J. D. Salinger Quotes

Don't know which one is worse, doing your own thing or just being cool.

In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.

I'm not a blender. I don't like people who blend into society.

You can be normal if you choose to be.

You have to be a freak in order to be different.

I don't have any desire to rebel and be something totally different from what I am.

Or about how when you're a child, to stop you from following the crowd you're assaulted with the line "If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you?" but when you're an adult and to be different is suddenly a crime, people seem to be saying, "Hey. Everyone else is jumping off a bridge. Why aren't you?

Clones fit in. Freaks stand out. Ask me which one I prefer.

I went to public school for like, one day. I don't get it. Everybody tries to be exactly the same. I think being an outsider is a good thing.

I didn't rebel in the way a lot of people do.

Songs don't have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I've done is about alienation... about where you fit in society.

I think pop culture underestimates people. The message is, 'Being yourself is the worst thing you could possibly be.' But people are still attracted to it.

It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

While children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.

I don't want to live up to how people expect me to be.

I know that many people kill off their real personality just to fit into this society, but why do we have to compromise? I never understood that. I decided to try to be myself and to live by my own values rather than those of others.

To be with the others, you have to have your hair short and wear ties. So we're trying to make a third world happen, you know what I mean?

I've seen a lot of good things and a lot of the bad of what Hollywood can bring. At the end of the day, I've found that when you try and fit in, that's a way to go crazy; you kind of lose yourself. I'm sometimes the different one at the table, but I don't care.

I felt early on I wasn't going to be a respectable citizen.

I don't believe in societal restrictions. It wasn't a choice - conformity simply never occurred to me.

The only behaviour that is truly common is to avoid doing something because you think others might consider it common.

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?

I've always wanted to be older, as I think it's all right to be a little bit odd when you're out of your 20s.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.

I didn't try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.