I think that the point of the story is not really about how often Holden complains but what and how he complains.

To me a great companion to this story is The Great Gatsby. On the surface the characters are shallow and annoyingly coy with their intentions. They seem to have no point - hell their lives are pointless, soaked in apathy and liquor.

Underneath all that is fear. Fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, and fear of oneself. I always felt bad for Holden because underneath his tough and bitter facade is a child alone in a world that cares nothing for him.

On the Catcher in the Rye

We believe that most of our days are unremarkable; but it’s only because we can’t remember them.

Sex-cynicism and race-pessimism, of course, often travel in tandem.

Ovce provedu čitav život plašeći se vuka, a na kraju ih pojede pastir.

Not all those who wear the name of villain, are truly evil men. Not all those who are respected as noble men, are worthy of the name. Many are those who wear a false mask of benevolence to hide their treachery and the wickedness of their true selves.

Sve naše nevolje dolaze otuda što nismo spremni da umremo od gladi.

Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard, has a term for this: “retrospective wait unemployment,” or “looking for the job you used to have.”

“It’s not a skill mismatch, but an identity mismatch,” he said. “It’s not that they couldn’t become a health worker, it’s that people have backward views of what their identity is.

Many from the generation that hated & bullied 'nerds' in HS in the 80s & early-90s (and perpetuated anti-nerd hate) are now the same anti-intellectuals on social media calling people 'elitists' & 'snobs' for speaking like they're informed or educated.

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

In my view, if you’re a journalist and Orwell isn’t one of your heroes then something’s gone wrong.

Belief is the death of intelligence.

Ništa se ne dešava jer niko ništa ne shvata.

Mihiz je jednom rekao za Srbe, a mislim da bi se to moglo primeniti i na druge, da smo mi sami sebe okupirali. Jer lako je Česima koje su okupirali Rusi, oni će jednog dana da izađu, ali šta mi da radimo.

Vlast pripada onome ko gospodari vanrednim stanjem.

Time is your most valuable resource; there are no refunds or second chances for that which you waste. Retire from social networking, break free from TV, and reduce the arbitrary drains on your time each day.

Choose your friends carefully, you are the average of the 5 people you spend most time with.

Give yourself every opportunity to establish yourself as a key person of influence in your industry. Write a little every day. Write a lot once a week. Try to write a book.

She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you.

And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.

Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? In fifty years’, thirty years’, ten years’ time the world will be very nearly back on its old course. History always has a great weight of inertia.