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Today is the birthday of noted author and recluse J. D. Salinger.   Writer of the celebrated and controversial “Catcher in the Rye,” Salinger has not been interviewed since 1980 and has not published anything since 1965.  A few quotes from Salinger and his works follow.

“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.”

From “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” (1955):

• “I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”

From “Catcher in the Rye”

• “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

From “Zooey”

• Jesus knew — knew — that we’re carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we’re all too . . . sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff.
• I swear to you, you’re missing the whole point of the Jesus Prayer. The Jesus Prayer has one aim, and one aim only. To endow the person who says it with Christ-Consciousness. Not to set up some little cozy, holier-than-thou trysting place with some sticky, adorable divine personage who’ll take you in his arms and relieve you of all your duties and [take all your troubles away].  And . . . if you have intelligence enough to see that — and you do — and yet you refuse to see it, then you’re misusing the prayer.

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