Catcher in the Rye Quotes

P35"He was unscrupulous. He really was. 'God damn it'. He was sore as hell.
He was really furious. 'You always do everything backasswards.' He looked at
me. 'No wonder you're flunking the hell out of here,' he said. 'You don't do
one damn thing the way you're supposed to. I mean it. Not one damn thing'."
Holden annoys Stradlater a lot. Holden thinks Stradlater cannot be trusted as he hates
him because he is dating Jane, the girl who he also likes. Holden always breaks schools
rules like smoking in the rooms to annoy Stradlater. He annoys Stradlater on 5
different instances and acts like a child with him. This eventually leads to Stradlater
punching him.
Page 40"You never saw such gore in your life. I had blood all over my mouth
and chin and even on my pyjamas and bathrobe. It partly scared me and it
partly fascinated me. All that blood and all sort of made me look tough. I'd
only been in about two fights in my life, and I lost both of them."
Holden annoys Stradlater for a fifth time and being fed up, Stradlater hits him.
However, Holden does not fight back as he knows that he does not have the strength
to hit Stradlater back. He has caused the fights he has been in and he has come off
second-best in both of them.
Page 42"I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead."
We see here how much Holden is depressed and how he starts to feel extremely
lonely. He can't place himself in the world of children or adults, simply fitting inbetween. He always opposes everyone and always sees himself in the world of failure.
This shows how mentally unstable Holden is.
Page 44"What's the routine on joining a monastery? I asked him. I was sort
of toying with the idea of joining one. Do you have to be a Catholic and all?"
Holden wakes Ackley up in the middle of the night and asks him weird questions in
relation to joining the monastery. He annoys Ackley so much as he is in one of his
weird moods that he sometimes goes into, at random.
"I just didn't want to hang around anymore. It made me too sad and
lonesome. So what I decided to do, I decided I'd take a room in a hotel in
New York. I didn't want to go home or anything till they got it and
thoroughly digested it and all. I didn't want to be around when they first got
it. My mother gets vey hysterical. She's not too bad after she gets
something thoroughly digested, though."
Holden, after his expulsion, is expecting a letter will go to his house for his parents
regarding his expulsion at the school. Holden waits for his parents to get the letter,
read it and cool down. He thinks that his parents will be angry, and emotional when
they read the news and he waits a while for the emotions to settle down before going
back home.
Page 46"I don't remember exactly how much I had, but I was pretty loaded."
We see a clearer perception of Holden's thoughts and views. Holden thinks he has a lot
of money but after his starts spending, he realises that he will run out quickly. He also
feels sad about failing his mother and her expectations of him not once, but twice

"I went down the hall and woke up Frederick Woodruff, this guy I'd lent my
typewriter to. It cost about ninety bucks, and all he bought it for was twenty.
He was sore because I'd woke him up."
Holden sold his typewriter to Frederick for $20 compared to the RRP of $90 he paid to
buy it, making a loss of 70. Holden seems to be strange as he wakes people up in the
middle of the night to question them about petty things and people get annoyed at
him for doing this.
Page 49"Well. He's a very sensitive boy. He's really never been a terribly
good mixer with other boys. Perhaps he takes things a little more seriously
than he should at his age."
We see here Holden giving Ernest's mother a good word for Ernest. He feels that
mothers are generally happy if people speak highly of their children and he wants the
sympathy of Ernest's mother. He even pretends to be Rudolph Schmidt
Page 51"No, everybody's fine at home, I said. 'It's me. I have to have this
operation. I have this tiny little tumour on the brain."
Holden goes to the great lengths of lying to Ernest's mother, indicating that he has a
brain tumour. He wants her to feels sorry for him as he wants to gain her sympathy.
We see, Holden's nature of contradictory, as he says others are phoneys and liars but
he is actually the biggest phoney of all.