"It’s the truth. Please don’t simply see it; feel it."

"I’m sorry. I’m awful,” she said. “I’ve just felt so destructive all week. It’s awful, I’m horrible."

"The connection was so bad, and I couldn’t talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back ‘What?"

"For some minutes, before she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, she just lay quiet, smiling at the ceiling."

"

Dear Miss Lester:

I hope a few lines will not annoy or embarrass you. I’m writing, Miss Lester, because I’d like you to know that I am not a common thief. I stole your bag, I want you to know, because I fell in love you the moment I saw you on the bus. I could think of no way to become acquainted with you except by acting rashly—foolishly, to be accurate. But then, one is a fool when one is in love.
I loved the way your lips were so slightly parted. You represented the answer to everything to me. I haven’t been unhappy since I came to New York four years ago, but neither have I been happy. Rather, I can best describe myself as having been one of the thousands of young men in New York who simply exist.
I came to New York from Seattle. I was going to become rich and famous and well-dressed and suave. But in four years I’ve learned that I am not going to become rich and famous and well-dressed and suave. I’m a good printer’s assistant, but that’s all I am. One day the printer got sick, and I had to take his place. What a mess I made of things, Miss Lester. No one would take my orders. The typesetters just sort of giggled when I would tell them to get to work. And I don’t blame them. I’m a fool when I give orders. I suppose I’m one of millions who was never meant to give orders. But I don’t mind anymore. There’s a twenty-three-year-old kid my boss just hired. He’s only twenty-three, and I am thirty-one and have worked at the same place for four years. But I know that one day he will become head printer, and I will be his assistant. But I don’t mind knowing this any more.
Loving you is the important thing, Miss Lester. There are some people who think that love is sex and marriage and six-o’clock kisses and children, and perhaps it is, Miss Lester. But do you know what I think? I think that love is a touch and yet not a touch.
I suppose it’s important to a woman that other people think of her as the wife of a man who is either rich, handsome, witty, or popular. I’m not even popular. I’m not even hated. I’m just—I’m just—Justin Horgenschlag. I never make people gay, sad, angry, or even disgusted. I think people regard me as a nice guy, but that’s all.
When I was a child no one pointed me out as being cute or bright or good-looking. If they had to say something they said I had sturdy little legs.
I don’t expect an answer to this letter, Miss Lester. I would like an answer more than anything else in the world, but truthfully I don’t expect one. I merely wanted you to know the truth. If my love for you has led me to a new and great sorrow, only I am to blame.
Perhaps one day you will understand and forgive your blundering admirer.
-Justin Horgenschlag

"

"Let’s just try to have a marvelous time this weekend. I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible. Especially me."

"How would you know you weren’t being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn’t."

"It is impossible to save children from falling out of the rye, but that doesn’t keep Holden from wishing that he could. You have to dive into the ocean, Salinger tells us, precisely because it is full of bowling balls. It is having hope which requires real guts. So wear your heart on your sleeve and if it bleeds, let it, so long as it still beats."

"Trust your heart. You’re a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I’m feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I’d give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart."