Catcher In The Rye Quotes

The catcher in the rye ... that's all I really want to be ... ~ J.D. Salinger

...as long as we have the choice to read what we want, I suspect Twain and Homer and the rest will always be with us. The stoutest old writers ebb and flow in popularity; tastes and political correctness and educational trends also ebb and flow, and we have a tendency to embrace the short view because it makes better news stories. So the joy of literature may not be at a high water mark right now, and yet you can walk into the Target store of your choice and pick up Catcher in the Rye. Beauty floats, I guess, along with sorrow and hope. (http://www.wab.org/events/allofroches...) ~ Leif Enger

Any book that can help you survive the slings and arrows of adolescence is a book to love for life; 'The Catcher in the Rye' did just that, and I still do love it. ~ Libba Bray

In what must surely be considered one of the great lost scripts of history (or a Saturday Night Live sketch), Chase brought his usual sensibility to a trial run, having Kevin discover The Catcher in the Rye and start smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and conversing with the shade of Holden Caulfield. ~ Brett Martin

How'd she happen to mention me? Does she do to B.M. now? She said she might go there. she said she might go to Shipley, too. I thought she went to Shipley. how'd she happen to mention me?"
- Personally after reading chapters 1-5 and learning about Jane and Holden's relationship as friends or just to people you can tell that obviously he does truly care about this girl. To make situations between Holden and Stradlater I see jealousy come with in the mix when a date between "Strad" and jane come up to holden during one of there normal horsing around moods ~ J.D. Salinger

I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you. ~ J.D. Salinger

Some guys spend days looking for something they lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I'd care too much. ~ J.D. Salinger

I always pick a gorgeous time to fall over a suitcase or something. ~ J.D. Salinger

Your generation - you've not heard the Verve or Jimi Hendrix or Eminem, you've not read The Catcher in the Rye, you've not seen a classic film like Terminator or Blade Runner. All you've done is read dross, listen to crap and watch Disney movies with happy endings. And what kind of generation have we produced? A slow, simple, dull one who never questions anything. A stunted generation. It's devolution because in order for society to progress, you need to be able to debate ideas, to question, to see the dark and the light in things ~ Sam Mills

I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all ... I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye ~ J.D. Salinger

A status symbol is a book. A very easy book to read is The Catcher in the Rye. Walk around with that under your arm, kids. That is status. ~ Vivienne Westwood

I'd be the catcher in the rye and all. ~ J.D. Salinger

I do not believe 'Newsweek' is the only catcher in the rye between democracy and ignorance, but I think we're one of them, and I don't think there are that many on the edge of that cliff. ~ Jon Meacham

I hate saying corny things like "traveling incognito." But when I'm with somebody that's corny, I always act corny too. ~ J.D. Salinger

I'd never seen that look on another face before, had never identified it in another person. I'd only met with it in fiction. But everyone falls in love with Holden Caulfield when they're sixteen. They read Catcher in the Rye and don't feel so alone. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, ... ,and he had very red hair. ~ J.D. Salinger

Everybody who has ever read Sandman knows exactly what the Sandman looks like, which is more than anybody who has ever read The Catcher in the Rye can say about Holden Caufield. ~ Neil Gaiman

In Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist Holden Caulfield mentions reading books that make him wish he could be friends with the author and be able to call him on the phone and so forth. I would consider a literary work that made someone feel this way a success. Furthermore, it's the only kind of success in literature that means anything to me. ~ Thomas Ligotti

In 1952, when I was 15 and living on Governors Island, which was then First Army Headquarters, I encountered the newly-published 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Of course, that book became the iconic anti-establishment novel for my generation. ~ Lois Lowry

The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye. ~ Amy Tan

Also "Catcher in the Rye", which happens to be one of my favorite books, I just found that kind of useful. It helps you get into the American accent. ~ Freddie Highmore

It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'Its a secret between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business ofice, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. ~ J.D. Salinger

What's your favorite book, and please don't let it be Catcher in the Rye."
"Why the hell not?" Theo asked.
"Because that will mean you haven't picked up a book of your own accord since high school. ~ Anyta Sunday

In America, people of a certain age ask, 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' In my house you were more likely to be asked, 'Where were you when you first read 'The Catcher In The Rye?' ~ Marisha Pessl

I really like The Catcher in the Rye a lot. ~ Ethan Suplee

So the Trustees of Ohio State were right in 1956 when they canned the English instructor for assigning Catcher in the Rye to his freshman class. They knew there is no qualitative difference between the kid who thinks it's funny to fart in chapel, and Che Guevara. They knew then Holden Caulfield would found SDS. ~ E.L. Doctorow

'Catcher in the Rye.' I feel like any brooding teen loves that book. ~ Justice Smith

I was fantastically well versed by the time I left school. I had a teacher who put 'A Clockwork Orange' my way, and 'Catcher in the Rye.' ~ Kenneth Cranham

What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. ~ J.D. Salinger

I mean if thousands of little kids are running and they do not look where they are going, I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day, I just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but this is the only thing that I really like to do! ~ J.D. Salinger

To me, White Boy Shuffle is sort of like Catcher in the Rye, the story is so universal. ~ Ryan Phillippe

One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. They were coming in the goddam window. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went around shaking hands with everybody's parents when they drove up to school. He'd be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. You should've seen the way he did with my roommate's parents. I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Haas would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I can't stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills ~ J.D. Salinger

And yes, Holden would keep those kids from falling off the cliff, but WHO WOULDN'T? Does she think I would just fold my arms or give them a pat on the back before they sailed headfirst to the ground? We are all catchers, and it's sad that she doesn't see it. Instead she sees the PHONINESS, she deplores the world even after I point out that I am in it. ~ David Levithan

All the books I liked were basically about the same topic. White Niggers by Ingvar Ambjørnsen, Beatles and Lead by Lars Saabye Christensen, Jack by Alf Lundell, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr., Novel with Cocaine by M. Agayev, Colossus by Finn Alnaes, Lasso Round the Moon by Agnar Mykle, The History of Bestiality trilogy by Jens Bjørneboe, Gentlemen by Klas Östergren, Icarus by Axel Jensen, The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, Humlehjertene by Ola Bauer and Post Office by Charles Bukowski.

Books about young men who struggled to fit into society, who wanted more from life than routines, more from life than a family, in short, young men who hated middle-class values and sought freedom. They travelled, they got drunk, they read and they dreamed about their life's Great Passion or writing the Great Novel.

Everything they wanted I wanted too. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

My first film goes into production in October. It's called White Boy Shuffle and it's based on a novel about a young black kid and it's sort of reminiscent of Catcher in the Rye. ~ Ryan Phillippe

Catcher in the Rye had a profound impact on me-the idea that we all have lots of dreams that are slowly being chipped away as we grow up. ~ Judd Nelson

The thing is, if you get very depressed about something, it's hard as hell to swallow. ~ J.D. Salinger

Why can't a democrat get fired up about protecting the environment and enacting gun control legislation just as right wing republicans get fired up about making sure that children have access to assault weapons and banning 'the catcher in the rye' and 'harry potter'? ~ Moby

Don't tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

- Holden Caulfield
The Catcher in the Rye ~ J.D. Salinger

I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy. ~ J.D. Salinger

'Catcher in the Rye' changed my life when I was a kid. I read it as I was a boy turning into a man, and I was so fascinated by the values. I believe in it. ~ Paul Wesley

St. Louis Blues (1929)

I hate to see de evenin' sun go down,
Hate to see de evenin' sun go down
'Cause ma baby, he done lef' dis town.
Feelin' tomorrow like I feel today,
Feel tomorrow like I feel today,
I'll pack my trunk, make ma git away.

Saint Louis woman wid her diamon' rings
Pulls dat man 'roun' by her apron strings.
'Twant for powder an' for store-bought hair,
De man ah love would not gone nowhere, nowhere.
Got de Saint Louis Blues jes as blue as ah can be.
That man got a heart lak a rock cast in the sea.

Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me. Doggone it!
I loves day man lak a schoolboy loves his pie,
Lak a Kentucky Col'nel loves his mint an' rye.
I'll love ma baby till the day ah die.

Been to de gypsy to get ma fortune tole,
To de gypsy, done got ma fortune tole,
Cause I'm most wile 'bout ma Jelly Roll.
Gypsy done tole me, "Don't you wear no black."
Yes, she done told me, "Don't you wear no black.

Go to Saint Louis, you can win him back."
Help me to Cairo, make Saint Louis by maself,
Git to Cairo, find ma old friend Jeff,
Gwine to pin maself close to his side;
If ah flag his train, I sho' can ride.
Got de Saint Louis Blues jes as blue as ah can be.
That man got a heart lak a rock cast in the sea.

Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me. Doggone it!
I loves day man lak a sch ~ Bessie Smith

We have to get families back in the game, get back where Saturday night, everything stops. A case of beer comes out and a bottle of rye and anyone who comes to the house, they better want to watch hockey. ~ Bobby Hull

Detroit is a great deli city. If only GM could learn from what the delis in Detroit are doing! The best rye bread anywhere - double-baked, crispy, warm rye that they serve their sandwiches with - and great corned beef. It's a passionate deli town. ~ David Sax

But then Oma tells me of bread, of the six hundred kinds made throughout her homeland, white and gray and black in color. Loaves heavy with pumpkin seeds. Pumpernickel. Rye. All with long, dense names like 'Sonnenblumenkernbrot' and 'Roggenmischbrot'. Each word is music to her. She has never eaten a tinned bread bagged in plastic with a little twist tie, a pride she wears all over. 'It matters,' she tells me. 'Wes Brot ich ess, des Lied ich sing.'
Whose bread I eat, his song I sing. ~ Christa Parrish

1. The cheerful horrors of inner reality amaze to the depths of the soul with the shock humor of evil. It's as if they are beating a shocker from whom you are laughing.
2. Laughter is an orgasm of awareness.
3. Science and art is a toy store. Created in order to occupy a person with something.
6. Loneliness is a catcher of erotic dreams.
7. Aphorism as a tattoo sticker in the mind.
8. You take off the mask of hypocrisy, and there are hundreds of billions of laughing monsters of monsters. They laugh in a smile of hatred; an ordinary person simply cannot stand so much awareness.
9. The idea appeared in a mirror maze and it is reflected in all the mirrors, that is, the opinion that the source cannot be found because it is hidden from your eyes. You see that opinion is a sect.
10. Laziness as an attraction a child's rocking machine is an illusion of movement. ~ Musin Almat Zhumabekovich

Now alongside Scovell, John eased preserved peaches out of galliot pots of syrup and picked husked walnuts from puncheons of salt. He clarified butter and poured it into rye-paste coffins. From the Master Cook, John learned to set creams with calves' feet, then isinglass, then hartshorn, pouring decoctions into egg-molds to set and be placed in nests of shredded lemon peel. To make cabbage cream he let the thick liquid clot, lifted off the top layer, folded it then repeated the process until the cabbage was sprinkled with rose water and dusted with sugar, ginger and nutmeg. He carved apples into animals and birds. The birds themselves he roasted, minced and folded into beaten egg whites in a foaming forcemeat of fowls.
John boiled, coddled, simmered and warmed. He roasted, seared, fried and braised. He poached stock-fish and minced the meats of smoked herrings while Scovell's pans steamed with ancient sauces: black chawdron and bukkenade, sweet and sour egredouce, camelade and peppery gauncil. For the feasts above he cut castellations into pie-coffins and filled them with meats dyed in the colors of Sir William's titled guests. He fashioned palaces from wafers of spiced batter and paste royale, glazing their walls with panes of sugar. For the Bishop of Carrboro they concocted a cathedral.
'Sprinkle salt on the syrup,' Scovell told him, bent over the chafing dish in his chamber. A golden liquor swirled in the pan. 'Very slowly.'
'It will taint the sugar,' John o ~ Lawrence Norfolk

You drive, walk, eat, look at television, read, and all the while, beyond you and the cozy circle created by your lady around herself and you, like the natural emanations of stars, other lives circle yours, seeds still winged and wind-borne, looking for sympathetic soil. You feel the juices and solids of your body in attempted rearrangement, or, more disturbing, making an effort to create a stillness that approximates death, beyond which the body does become soil, receptive to all wind-borne seeds. In a not especially prolonged stillness, as though no chances could be taken that you might decide to become perpetual motion, words fall out of the air, a random fall from which you might be tempted to make selection, and as you do not move, cannot, a string of words falls onto you, and from you, onto the paper: winter rye greening up, smoothing the old brown earth with a fine new plane: Carpenter Rye, neighbor. ~ Coleman Dowell

Here's how you practice shrieking like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years:
You stand in the middle of the field.
You look around to be sure that no one is going to hear you.
You breathe in a couple of times to get as much air in your chest as you can.
You stretch your neck up like the Great Esquimaux Curlew.
You imagine that it's Game Seven of the World Series and it's the bottom of the ninth and Joe Pepitone is rounding third base and the throw is coming in and the catcher has his glove up waiting for the ball and Joe Pepitone is probably going to be out and the game will be over and the Yankees will lose.
Then you let out your shriek, because that's how everyone in Yankee Stadium would be shrieking right then.
That's how you practice shrieking like an insane woman who has been locked in an attic for a great many years. And you keep doing it over and over again until all the birds in Marysville have flown away. ~ Gary D. Schmidt

Girl, you're the Sentinel of this House, and you've been trained by Catcher and Luc and Ethan. He's in the training room right now. Get down there and kick his ass! ~ Chloe Neill

Everything was perfect and, for the first time in a long time, I was really happy. However, if there's a universal truth in life, it is that things never stay perfect for long. Sooner or later, the shit always hits the fan, right? ~ Rye Hart

One day he [Wagner] was batting against a young pitcher who had just come into the league. The catcher was a kid, too . The pitcher threw Honus a curve ball, and he swung at it and missed and fell down. Looked helpless as a robin. I was kind of surprised, but the guy sitting next to me poked me in the ribs and said, 'Watch this next one.' Those kids figured they had the old man's weakness, you see, and served him up the same dish - as he knew they would. Well, Honus hit a line drive so hard the fence in left field went back and forth for five minutes. ~ Burleigh Grimes

Pessimism, feelings of worthlessness and lack of entitlement, inability to derive satisfaction from pleasure, a tormenting awareness of the world's general crappiness: for Katz's Jewish paternal forebears, who'd been driven from shtetl to shtetl by implacable anti-Semites, as for the old Angles and Saxons on his mother's side, who'd labored to grow rye and barley in the poor soils and short summers of northern Europe, feeling bad all the time and expecting the worst had been natural ways of equilibriating themselves with the lousiness of their circumstances. Few things gratified depressives, after all, more than really bad news. This obviously wasn't an optimal way to live, but it had its evolutionary advantages. Depressives in grim situations handed down their genes, however despairingly, while the self-improvers converted to Christianity or moved away to sunnier locales. ~ Jonathan Franzen

I still had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahead of me as the seniors at Rye when I was in the sixth grade; people who knew everything instinctively, who made their lives work out the way they wanted without even trying, who never had to make the best of a bad job because it never occured to them to do anything less then perfectly the first time. Sort of heroic super-people, all of them beautiful and witty and calm and kind, and I always imagined that when I did find them I'd suddenly know that I Belonged among them, that I was one of them, that I'd been meant to be one of them all along, and everything in teh meantime had been a mistake; and they'd know it too. I'd be like the ugly duckling among the swans. ~ Richard Yates

In modern society, where anyone in theory can make money, it is difficult to appreciate that once upon a time wealth was tied absolutely to social class, and therefore social class determined what you ate, even to the extent of determining the type of pastry making up your pie. Farming and household manuals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries clearly instructed that the piecrust for the master's family be made from the finest wheat flour, whereas for the servants' piecrust the second milling of wheat or barley was to be used, or maslin (a mix of wheat and rye) or rye. ~ Janet Clarkson

I stood transfixed, the silence ringing in my ears. From the field of wild grasses; cocksfoot, tufted hair, wild oat, tall fescue, reed canary and perennial rye, their subtle shades of green, ochre and pink softly patching and blending in rustling movement, suddenly rose a small flock of starlings that had been feeding quietly unseen among the tall waving stems, the swish of their glossy wings startlingly loud in the stillness of midday. Heat held me captive. ~ Nell Grey

Isabelle drifted over, Jace a pace behind her. She was wearing a long black dress with boots and an even longer cutaway coat of soft green velvet, the color of moss. "I can't believe you did it!" she exclaimed. "How did you get Magnus to let Jace leave?"
"Traded him for Alec," Clary said.
Isabelle looked mildly alarmed. "Not permanently?"
"No," said Jace. "Just for a few hours. Unless I don't come back," he added thoughtfully. "In which case, maybe he does get to keep Alec. Think of it as a lease with an option to buy."
Isabelle looked dubious. "Mom and Dad won't be pleased if they find out."
"That you freed a possible criminal by trading away your brother to a warlock who looks like a gay Sonic the Hedgehog and dresses like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?" Simon inquired. "No, probably not. ~ Cassandra Clare

Look. I know why you gave me that speech earlier today. I know you have an obligation to protect your vampires. But irrespective of the way that I was made, I have done everything that you've asked of me. I've taken training, I gave up my dissertation, I moved into the House, I got you in to see my father, I got you into the Breckenridge house, and I've dated the man you asked me to." I pointed at the house behind us. "And even though I was supposed to get a few hours free from the drama of Cadogan House tonight with said man, I followed you here because you requested it. At some point, Ethan, you might consider giving me a little credit." I didn't wait for him to answer, but turned on my heel and went to the car. I opened the back door, climbed inside, and slammed it shut behind me. Catcher caught my gaze in the rearview mirror. "Feel better?" "Is he still standing there with that dumbstruck expression on his face?" There was a pause while he checked, then a chuckle. "Yes, he is." "Then, yes, I feel better. ~ Chloe Neill

We all do stupid, cruel things as children. I remember I once took a neighbor's dog and shut it in my house, then told the little girl her dog had been picked up by the dog catcher and destroyed. I still wake up at three in the morning seeing her face. I tracked her down about ten years ago to say I was sorry but she'd been killed in a car accident."
"You have to forgive yourself", said Gamache, holding up Being.
"You're right, of course. But maybe I don't want to. Maybe that's something I don't want to lose. My own private hell. Horrible, but mine. ~ Louise Penny

Of course, I believe that Mike Piazza is probably the greatest offensive catcher in the history of baseball, only got over 50%. Johnny Bench is the best catcher in the history of baseball, but Piazza has all the record for catchers as far as offensively. ~ Pete Rose

But everyone likes dogs," Cassandra protested.
"I don't dislike dogs. I just don't want one in my house."
"Our house." She braced her elbows on the table and massaged her temples. "I've always had dogs. Pandora and I couldn't have survived our childhood without Napoleon and Josephine. If cleanliness is what worries you, I'll make certain the dog is bathed often, and accidents will be disposed of right away."
That drew a grimace from him. "I don't want there to be accidents in the first place. Besides, you'll have more than enough to keep you busy- you won't have time for a pet."
"I need a dog."
Tom held the propelling pencil between his first and second fingers, and flipped it back and forth to make the ends tap on the table. "Let's look at this logically- you don't really need a dog. You're not a shepherd or a rat catcher. Household dogs serve no useful purpose."
"They fetch things," Cassandra pointed out.
"You'll have an entire staff of servants to fetch anything you want."
"I want a companion who'll go on walks with me, and sit on my lap while I pet him."
"You'll have me for that."
Cassandra pointed to the contract. "Dog," she insisted. "I'm afraid it's nonnegotiable. ~ Lisa Kleypas

1. The face tears up from laughter, and there is not flesh and soul, but a continuous smile of awareness.
2. A ghost is a hologram record of the projection of the universe, once generated by an accident of chaos, living in reality. This spirit is like the same memoirs and nostalgia of the past. This is a retro record of bygone times, traveling in empty eternity and nonsense, feeling only insensibility. A time-space film of time and space existing in time, in the depressing eternity of reality, in the void of consciousness of loneliness. A ghost who sees is not evolutionary progress, but the life cycle of a temporary transformation, rotting from the depravity of people.
3. Loneliness is a catcher of erotic dreams.
4. Careerism is a children's entertainment, attraction mini-golf of self-motivation and discipline.
5. Death from the dust of all the dead and dust of memories. Fear is all out of the darkness of the subconscious of billions of threads of manipulation.
6. Love relationships as a table hockey attraction, and the puck is the fault.
7. Laziness as an attraction a children's rocking chair is an illusion of movement.
8. The idea appeared in a mirror maze and it is reflected in all the mirrors, that is, the opinion that the source cannot be found because it is hidden from your eyes. You see that opinion is a sect. ~ Musin Almat Zhumabekovich

Has he apologized?" "In the way that he apologizes. 'I would do anything to protect you,'" I said, in a pretty good imitation. Mallory nodded. "He gave you an alphapology." "What now?" "An alphapology. The apology made by the alpha male, which isn't really an apology, but more a reason for insane behavior. Catcher does it all the damn time. Drives me up the wall. ~ Chloe Neill

Taggle, meanwhile, made himself popular, killing rats and bringing a rabbit into camp every evening, preening in the praise - silently, thank god, though at night, he recounted choice bits to Kate: "Rye Baro says I am a princeling; he split the leg bone for me so that I could eat the marrow. They love me. And I'm sure they'll keep you, too."
Mira, she thought, and treasured it each time she heard it, They must keep me. Family. ~ Erin Bow

I was a baseball player. I played in high school and a little bit in college. I was a catcher. I don't know if I could have played any other position. As a catcher, you're always on the ball. ~ Tim DeKay

He learns that the form, in its current form, was originally called a formulary, and was invented by an Englishman named Charles Babbage, the same man who invented both an early kind of computer and the cow catcher, a device attached to the front of locomotives to clear debris from train tracks. He learns that Babbage once wrote to Alfred Tennyson to correct two lines from one of Tennyson's poems, which Babbage felt lacked scientific accuracy. This, thinks Jonas, tells you everything you need to know about both the man and the invention of forms. ~ Stephen Dau

What white Americans do not face when they regard a Negro reality- the fact that life is tragic. Life is tragic simply because he earth turn and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps, the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves all he beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, race, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which us rye inly fact we have. ~ James Baldwin

And what about us?" Catcher asked.
Gabriel's eyebrows lifted. "You're part of the mystery-solving gang, aren't you?"
Catcher muttered something unflattering, and Mallory nudged him. "I presume you want us to stay here tonight?" she asked.
"It would make things easier," Gabe said.
"So we'll sleep on the couch," Catcher said, "like we're twelve-year-olds at a slumber party."
"In fairness," Ethan said, "we don't all have to sleep on the couch."
"In fairness," Catcher said, "you can kiss my ass."
"Ladies," Mallory said. "Let's put on our big-girl panties. Merit and Ethan are already sleeping in the bedroom, and there's no point in making them move. Catcher and I can take the couch. The shifters will feel better if we make this work, and it's no great loss to any of us. ~ Chloe Neill

As far as my planting program goes, I simply broadcast rye and barley seed on separate fields in the fall ... while the rice in those areas is still standing. A few weeks after that I harvest the rice, and then spread its straw back over the fields as mulch. ~ Masanobu Fukuoka

It's as though my mother's life has been cut in two and we each only hold half of her memories. And I realize that even combined we would never know the whole. She's greater than the sum of what we remember of her. The woman Harry knows and the one I know are just edges of something larger.
I think about Elias and what he knows of my life in the Forest. And of Catcher and what he knows of my life in Vista. But does either of them know the whole of me? ~ Carrie Ryan

Let us candidly admit that there are shameful blemishes on the American past, of which the worst by far is rum. Nevertheless, we have improved man's lot and enriched his civilization with rye, bourbon and the Martini cocktail. In all history has any other nation done so much? ~ Bernard DeVoto

I tried to lighten the mood, and pointed at the house shoes - the last things I'd have expected to see Catcher Bell wearing. "And the shoes?" I asked with a grin.
"My house, my rules. These shoes happen to be comfortable," he said "If you two roamed around the house naked and carrying bows and arrows before I moved in, it's none of my business. ~ Chloe Neill

Morgan and Catcher said their manly hellos - consisting of a symbolic head bob from Catcher (of the "You're in my lair now" variety) and a responding nod from Morgan (of the "You are clearly the king of this castle" variety). ~ Chloe Neill

Katz had read extensively in popular sociobiology, and his understanding of the depressive personality type and its seemingly perverse persistence in the human gene pool was that depression was successful adaptation to ceaseless pain and hardship. Pessimism, feelings of worthlessness and lack of entitlement, inability to derive satisfaction from pleasure, a tormenting awareness of the world's general crappiness: for Katz Jewish paternal forebears, who'd been driven from shtetl to shtetl by implacable anti-Semites, as for the old Angles and Saxons on his mother's side, who'd labored to grow rye and barley in the poor soils and short summers of northern Europe, feeling bad all the time and expecting the worse had been natural ways of equilibriating themselves with the lousiness of their circumstances. Few things gratified depressives, after all, more than really bad news. This obviously wasn't an optimal way to live, but it had its evolutionary advantages. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Although the rival cereals of rye, barley,oats, buckwheat and millet have continued to exist in Europe, the triumphal march of king wheat was uncontestable ~ Norman Davies

From the railway station far away the sharp clang of a bell...In half an hour the train starts, and there is so much still to say that has been left unsaid...The mothers, fearful and fussy, look for their sons in among the crowd like hens in search of their chicks; their wizened faces are hard and wrinkled like winter apples, they carry huge baskets on their arms, over-filled with the last delicacies which their fond, toil-worn hands will prepare for the beloved son for the next three years:--a piece of smoked bacon, a loaf of rye bread, a cake of maize-flour.

The gypsies have struck up a melancholy Magyar folksong: the crowd breaks up in isolated groups, mothers and father with their sons whisper in the dark corners of the bran. The father who did his service thirty years ago gives sundry good advice - no rebellion, quiet obedience, no use complaining or grumbling, the three years are quickly over. The mother begs her darling not to give way to drink, and not to get entangled with one of the hussies in the towns; women and wine, the two besetting temptations that assail the Magyar peasant - let the darling boy resist both for his sorrowing mother's sake. ~ Emmuska Orczy

Now obviously, in peacetime a one-legged catcher, like a one-armed outfielder (such as the Mundys had roaming right), would have been at the most a curiosity somewhere down in the dingiest town in the minors - precisely where Hot had played during the many years that the nations of the world lived in harmony. But it is one of life's grisly ironies that what is catastrophe for most of mankind, invariably works to the advantage of a few who live on the fringes of the human community. On the other hand, it is a grisly irony to live on the fringes of the human community. ~ Philip Roth

When we would visit, the ritual was the same. My grandfather would put out a spread on the kitchen table: six or eight kinds of lunch meat, including Pennsylvania esoterics like Lebanon bologna and souse; white and rye bread; pickles; two mustards; and mayonnaise. We would all sit around that kitchen table and construct our sandwiches and then eat those sandwiches in silence, because that is how white people show affection. ~ Phoebe Robinson

Bread plays favorites.
From the earliest times, it acts as a social marker, sifting the poor from the wealthy, the cereal from the chaff.
The exceptional from the mediocre.
Wheat becomes more acceptable than rye; farmers talk of losing their 'rye teeth' as their economic status improves. Barley is for the most destitute, the coarse grain grinding down molars until the nerves are exposed. Breads with the added richness of eggs and milk and butter become the luxuries of princes. Only paupers eat dark bread adulterated with peas and left to sour, or purchase horse-bread instead of man-bread, often baked with the floor sweepings, because it costs a third less than the cheapest whole-meal loaves. When brown bread makes it to the tables of the prosperous, it is as trenchers- plates- stacked high with fish and meat and vegetables and soaked with gravy. The trenchers are then thrown outside, where the dogs and beggars fight over them. Crusts are chipped off the rolls of the rich, both to make it easier to chew and to aid in digestion. Peasants must work all the more to eat, even in the act of eating itself, jaws exhausted from biting through thick crusts and heavy crumb. There is no lightness for them. No whiteness at all.
And it is the whiteness every man wants. Pure, white flour. Only white bread blooms when baked, opening to the heat like a rose. Only a king should be allowed such beauty, because he has been blessed by his God. So wouldn't he be surprised- no, ~ Christa Parrish

I'm sorry. I know how much players have to focus, and I know not to be a distraction. I just got caught up in the moment, in the great game, in your terrific pitching."

But I felt a need to explain more.

"Look, Jason, I love baseball. I love the crack of the bat hitting the ball. I love the seventh-inning stretch and singing 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game.' I love eating hot dogs and standing for the singing of the national anthem. I love doing the wave. I love Kiss Cam. I love that the game isn't over until it's over.

"I love the thrill of a home run and the disappointment of an out at first. I love the way a batter stands at the plate and the catcher readies himself to receive the pitch. I love watching the pitcher windup. I love sitting in the stands and feeling like I'm part of the game.

"And tonight, watching you pitch, I forgot that I'm only a small part - the spectator. Watching you, I felt like I was in the game, out on that field with you. You're out there on the mound, living a dream that so few people ever experience.

"I'm sorry, sorry that tonight I ruined the moment for you."

He was staring at me intently. I'd just bared my soul. Why didn't he speak? What could he possibly be thinking?

My nerves stretched taut.

"Say something," I demanded.

"There's nothing else to say," he said in that quiet way he had.

Then he lowered his head and kissed me. ~ Rachel Hawthorne

Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant andfluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Superorganism. A biologist coined that word for our great African ant colonies, claiming that consciousness and intelligence resided not in the individual ant but in the collective ant mind. The trail of red taillights stretching to the horizon as day broke around us made me think of that term. Order and purpose must reside somewhere other than within each vehicle. That morning I heard the hum, the respiration of the superorganism. It's a sound the new immigrant hears but not for long. By the time I learned to say "6-inch Number 7 on rye with Swiss hold the lettuce," the sound, too, was gone. It became part of the what the mind would label silence. You were subsumed into the superorganism. ~ Abraham Verghese

[W]e are under a deception similar to that which misleads the traveler in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan all is dry and bare; but far in advance, and far in the rear, is the semblance of refreshing waters... A similar illusion seems to haunt nations through every stage of the long progress from poverty and barbarism to the highest degrees of opulence and civilization. But if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shall find it recede before us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It is now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot in a modern workhouse, when to have a clean shirt once a week was a privilege reserved for the higher class of gentry, when men died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes of our towns, and when men died faster in the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana.

...

We too shall in our turn be outstripped, and in our turn be envied. It may well be, in the twentieth century, that the peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserably paid with twenty shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich may receive ten shillings a day; that laboring men may be as little used to dine without meat as they are now to eat rye bread; that sanitary police and ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay