#j.d. salinger – @denofwolves-blog-blog on Tumblr

Franny: "You can say anything you want if you don't get abusive about it. I just don't feel like a workout this morning. I mean it."

Zooey: "No workouts, no workouts, buddy. And if there's one thing I never am, it's abusive. Oh, a little brisk sometimes, yes, when the situation warrants. Abusive, never. Personally, I've always found that you can catch more flies with --"

Franny: "I mean it, now, Zooey. And I wish you'd sit up, incidentally. Every time all hell breaks loose around here, it seems very funny to me that it always comes from that spot right where you're lying. And you're always the one that's there. C'mon, now. Just please sit up."

Zooey: "Fortunately, I know you don't mean that. Not deep down. We both know, deep in our hearts, that this is the only piece of hallowed ground in this whole goddam haunted house. This happens to be where I used to keep my rabbits. And they were saints, both of them. As a matter of fact, they were the only celibate rabbits in the --"

Franny: "Oh, shut up! Just start, if you're going to. All I ask is that you at least try to be a little bit tactful, the way I'm feeling right now -- that's all. You are without a doubt the most tactless person I've ever known in my life."

Zooey: "Tactless! Never. Outspoken, yes, High-spirited, yes. Mettlesome. Sanguine, perhaps, to a fault. But no one has ever --"

Franny: "I said tactless! Just get sick sometime and go visit yourself, and you'll find out how tactless you are! You're the most impossible person to have around when somebody's not feeling up to par that I've ever known in my life. If somebody just has a cold, even, you know what you do? You give them a dirty look every time you see them. You're absolutely the most unsympathetic person I've ever known. You are!"

#j.d. salinger #franny and zooey

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Zooey: "I don't think everybody's made of iron, buddy."

Franny: "Well you'd think you did. I mean, did you call for any special reason? I mean, did you have any special reason for calling me?"

Zooey: "No special reason, buddy, no special reason. I suppose I more or less called to tell you to go on with your Jesus Prayer if you want to. I mean that's your business. That's your business. It's a goddam nice prayer, and don't let anybody tell you anything different."

Franny: "I know."

Zooey: "I don't think I ever really meant to try to stop you from saying it. At least, I don't think I did. I don't know. I don't know what the hell was going on in my mind. There's one thing I do know for sure, though. I have no goddam authority to be speaking up like a seer the way I have been. We've had enough goddam seers in this family. That part bothers me. That part scares me a little bit. It scares me a little bit but it doesn't petrify me. Let's get that straight. It doesn't petrify me. Because you forget one thing, buddy. When you first felt the urge, the call, to say the prayer, you didn't immediately start searching the four corners of the world for a master. You came home. You not only came home but you went into a goddam collapse. So if you look at it in a certain way, by rights you're only entitled to the low-grade spiritual counsel we're able to give you around here, and no more. At least you know there won't be any goddam ulterior motives in this madhouse. Whatever we are, we're not fishy, buddy. I'll tell you one thing, Franny. One thing I know. And don't get upset. It isn't anything bad. But if it's the religious life you want, you ought to know right now that you're missing out on every single goddam religious action that's going on around this house. You don't even have the sense enough to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup -- which is the only kind of chicken soup Bessie ever brings to anybody around this madhouse. So just tell me, just tell me, buddy. Even if you went out and searched the whole world for a master -- some guru, some holy man -- to tell you how to say your Jesus Prayer properly, what good would it do you? How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don't even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose? Can you tell me that?

#j.d. salinger #franny and zooey

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Zooey: " God damn it, there are nice things in the world -- and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked. Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.

Franny: (blowing her nose) "Well I'm sorry. Can't I blow my nose?"

Zooey: "You finished?"

Franny: "Yes, I'm finished! My gosh, what a family. You take your life in your hands if you just blow your nose."

Zooey: "Buddy once said something reasonably sensible to me a couple of years ago, if I can remember what it was. He said that a man should be able to lie at the bottom of a hill with his throat cut, slowly bleeding to death, and if a pretty girl or an old woman should pass by with a beautiful jug balanced perfectly on the top of her head, he should be able to raise himself up on one arm and see the jug safely over the top of the hill. I'd like to see him do it, the bastard. Everybody in this family gets his goddam religion in a different package. Walt was a hot one. Walt and Boo Boo had the hottest religious philosophies in the family. Walt once told Waker that everybody in the family must have piled up one helluva lot of bad karma in his past incarnations. He had a theory, Walt, that the religious life, and all the agony that goes with it, is just something God sicks on people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world."

#j.d. salinger #franny and zooey

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Franny: "What happened was, I got the idea in my head -- and I could not get it out -- that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping -- and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge -- when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake -- is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly."

Zooey: "I want to ask you something, Franny. What do you think you're doing with the Jesus Prayer? This is what I was trying to get at last night. Before you told me to go chase myself. You talk about piling up treasure -- money, property, culture, knowledge, and so on and so on. In going ahead with the Jesus Prayer -- just let me finish, now, please -- in going ahead with the Jesus Prayer, aren't you trying to lay up some kind of treasure? Something that's every goddam bit as negotiable as all those other, more material things? Or does the fact that it's a prayer make all the difference? I mean by that, is there all the difference in the world, for you, which side somebody lays up his treasure -- this side or the other? The one where thieves can't break in, et cetera? Is that what makes the difference? Wait a second, now -- just wait'll I'm finished, please. There's something about the way you're going at this prayer that gives me the willies, if you want to know the truth. You think I'm out to stop you from saying it. I don't know whether I am or not -- that's a goddam debatable point -- but I would like you to clear up for me just what the hell your motives are for saying it. As a matter of simple logic, there's no difference at all, that I can see, between the man who's greedy for material treasure -- or even intellectual treasure -- and the man who's greedy for spiritual treasure. As you say, treasure's treasure, God damn it, and it seems to me that ninety percent of all the world-hating saints in history were just as acquisitive and unattractive, basically, as the rest of us are."

#j.d. salinger #franny and zooey

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Zooey Glass: "This whole goddamn house stinks of ghosts. I don't mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one. I wish to God Buddy'd make up his mind. He does everything else Seymour ever did -- or tries to. Why the hell doesn't he kill himself and be done with it? We're freaks, the two of us, Franny and I. I'm a twenty-five-year-old freak and she's a twenty-one-year-old freak, and both those bastards are responsible. The symptoms are a little more delayed in Franny's case than mine, but she's a freak, too, and don't you forget it. I swear to you, I could murder them both without even batting an eyelash. The great teachers. The great emancipators. My God. I can't even sit down to lunch with a man any more and hold up my end of a decent conversation. I either get so bored or so goddam preachy that if the son of a bitch had any sense, he'd break his chair over my head. Not that anybody's interested, but I can't even sit down to a goddam meal, to this day, without first saying the Four Great Vows under my breath, and I'll lay any odds you want Franny can't, either. They drilled us with such goddam --"

Bessie Glass: "The four great what?"

Zooey: "The Four Great Vows. 'However innumerable beings are, I vow to save them; however inexhaustible the passions are, I vow to extinguish them; however immeasurable the Dharmas are, I vow to master them; however incomparable the Buddha-truth is, I vow to attain it.' Yay, team. I know I can do it. Just put me in, coach. My God, I've been mumbling that under my breath three meals a day every day of my life since I was ten. I can't eat unless I say it. I tried skipping it once when I was having a lunch with LeSage. I gagged on a goddam cherrystone clam, doing it."

Bessie: "I wish you'd get married. Well I do. Why don't you?"

Zooey: "I like to ride in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window any more when you're married."

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