"...they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us...calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time...and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together."
"Everything she did, she did with deliberate poise, but there was something uncoordinated about her that was goofy. That's the part I liked."
"Where Helen had begun to falter, [Wilder] felt more determined, like a climber who has at long last reached the foot of the mountain he has prepared all his life to scale."
pickI've read this book many times in my life & Holden always strikes me in different ways. There have been times when I understood him, times when I worried about him, & times when I wanted him to grow up. Yet through all these times I have loved him. Reading this book is like visiting an old friend.
"Whatever passed between us then, I cannot name, but I bet it's the same thing that passes between spies who recognize each other, who are grateful to be seen at last by someone who knows the truth behind the disguise."
The greatest "fuck you" intro ever written: "My first stepfather used to say that what I didn't know would fill a book. Well, here it is."
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
