J. D. Salinger Quotes

It's lovely. I hate it.

Maybe the first time you saw her you were ten. She was standing in the sun scratching her legs. Or tracing letters in the dirt with a stick. Her hair was being pulled. Or she was pulling someone's hair. And a part of you was drawn to her, and a part of you resisted--wanting to ride off on your bicycle, kick a stone, remain uncomplicated. In the same breath you felt the strength of a man, and a self-pity that made you feel small and hurt. Part of you thought: Please don't look at me. If you don't, I can still turn away. And part of you thought: Look at me.

Everyone can relate to loving someone and hating them in the same moment - husbands, wives, partners, siblings, parents, friends. It's kind of universal in that way.

But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate.

It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness

People always tell me either A. you love him. B. you hate him. My usual answer? C. All of the above.

She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin, dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes—she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven with her deepest life.

I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair. I hate the way you drive my car. I hate it when you stare. I hate your big dumb combat boots, and the way you read my mind. I hate you so much it makes me sick; it even makes me rhyme. I hate it, I hate the way you're always right. I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry. I hate it when you're not around, and the fact that you didn't call. But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

Can you hate someone for what they have done, but still love them for whom they had been?

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.

Comedy and tragedy are so mixed up in life, Gilbert. The only thing that haunts me is that tale of the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all that time. I can't believe they really did. Somebody has said that 'hate is only love that has missed its way.' I feel sure that under the hatred they really loved each other . . . just as I really loved you all those years I thought I hated you . . . and I think death would show it to them. I'm glad I found out in life.

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.

Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love - a powerful, wonderful thing. And a ridiculous thing, too.

It was so silly to try to define things by words. What did one person mean by infatuation or obsession and another mean by love. The whole thing couldn't be tidied away with neat little labels." - Lena Gray

it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.

Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage.

But you can't truly hate a man without loving him first, and there's always a trace of that love left over.

There are things that make us choose, on certain days, on certain nights, the opposite of love, in all its variations. But I want to acknowledge that with love and hate it's not simply one or the other. It's at least two, three, four, five different emotions existing at once, side by side, a broad spectrum of things alive.

So we can be filled with holes and loss and wide expanses of unhealed geography - and we can also be excited by life and in love and content at the exact same moment.

I hate you, Richard Wagner . . . but I hate you on my knees.

Happy and sad, elated and miserable, secure and afraid, loved and denied, patient and angry, peaceful and wild, complete and empty...all of it. I would feel everything. It would all be mine.

Ah, why can't I know if I love, or if I hate?

Not only are love and hate such closely related emotions, but it's a lot easier to hate someone you've cared about than someone you never have.

The neurotic usually obeys his own Golden Rule: Hate thy neighbor as thyself.

I don't mean to hate people, I just get forced into it.