The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger

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Important Quotations Explained

1. “Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.”
“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.


2. [Ackley] took another look at my hat . . . “Up home we wear a hat like that to shoot deer in, for Chrissake,” he said. “That’s a deer shooting hat.”
“Like hell it is.” I took it off and looked at it. I sort of closed one eye, like I was taking aim at it. “This is a people shooting hat,” I said. “I shoot people in this hat.”


3. The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. . . . Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.


4. . . . 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’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.


5. “I have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall. . . . The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. . . . So they gave up looking.”


Rye

by DaveMacDonald, September 01, 2012

'The song “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye” asks if it is wrong for two people to have a romantic encounter out in the fields, away from the public eye, even if they don’t plan to have a commitment to one another.'

I thought the 'Rye' referred to in Robert Burns' poem was the river Rye, hence the lines: 'Jenny's a wet poor body, Jenny's seldom dry'. In this regard it is about two people who meet at a river with no crossing, which will cause people to question why one of them is wet and what they have been doing.

13 out of 29 people found this helpful

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Additional Important Quotation: Epiphany/Climax

by juliaaparkerr, September 27, 2012

I have found one very important quotation from this novel to have been left out on this page. It is very useful for many papers and is a VERY important quotation!

Chapter 25 (towards the end)
"The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them."

This occurs while Holden is watching Phoebe ride the carousel in Central Park and fears Phoebe will fall off her house while reaching for a gold... Read more

855 out of 883 people found this helpful

0

Jenny Is Wet

by catcher61, October 02, 2012

"I thought the 'Rye' referred to in Robert Burns' poem was the river Rye, hence the lines: 'Jenny's a wet poor body, Jenny's seldom dry'. In this regard it is about two people who meet at a river with no crossing, which will cause people to question why one of them is wet and what they have been doing."

No. Rye means a field of rye. Remember that this is a sexually-themed poem. When Burns says that "Jenny is rarely dry," he is referring to her vaginal lubrication. Jenny is sexually active, so her genitals are seldom dry.

41 out of 48 people found this helpful

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