English Key Quotes

"that's the way that go!"

Gabriel

anything sounding mentally disabled including religion

Gabriel

"God da*n every godda*n thing to hell"

General Sash

if it's a description of the land with the rabbits (unless its clearly Lennie)

George

something sassy

Hazel

anything with the word phony

Holden

anything mildly controlling or imperious

Mrs. Mitty

childish yet useful advice

Phoebe

most things compassionate and understanding

Rose

stories about bragging or taunting death

Troy

academic/lifestyle advice in more of a helpful manner

Antolini

"When it comes to my money... I'm as right as fire-works on the Fourth of July"

Bono

"some people build fences to keep people out and other people build fences to keep people in. Rose wants to hold on to you all. She loves you."

Bono

"I oughtta shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't oughtta of let no stranger shoot my dog."

Candy

"He ain't no good to you, Candy. An' he ain't no good to himself. Why'n't you shoot him, Candy?"

Carlson

"Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?"

Carlson

If it's something encouraging Candy to shoot his dog

Carlson

"How come you ain't never liked me?"

Cory

"You ain't never gave me nothing! You ain't never done nothing but hold me back. Afraid I was gonna be better than you! All you ever did was try and make me scared of you."

Cory

Anything talking about football

Cory

"It wasn't nothing... you guys comin' in an' settin' made me forget. What she says is true."

Crooks

"S'pose George don't come back no more."

Crooks

"You got no right to come in my room. This here's my room. Nobody got any right in here but me."

Crooks

"every damn one of 'em's got a little piece of land in his head. An' never a God da*n one of 'em ever gets it. Just like heaven."

Crooks

If it's something mean, aggressive, or cruel

Curley

"Ever'body out doin' som'pin'. Ever'body! An' what am I doin'? Standing here talkin' to a bunch of bindle stiffs- a ni**er, an' a dum-dum and a lousy ol' sheep."

Curley's wife

"Listen ni**er... you know what I can do to you if you open your trap... I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny

Curley's wife

"Look out, now, you'll muss it. You stop it now, you'll mess it all up. Let go, you let go!"

Curley's wife

"Seems like they ain't none of them cares how I gotta live. I tell you I ain't used to livin' like this. I couldna made somethin' of myself."

Curley's wife

If it's something seductive

Curley's wife

If it's very racist

Curley's wife

"Mama, can I have these old quilts?"

Dee

"She's dead.... I couldn't bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me"

Dee

"You just don't understand your heritage"

Dee

o "you ought to try to make something of yourself, too, Maggie. It's really a new day for us. But from the way you and Mama still live you'd never know it."

Dee

"Was, I'd a known what to do"

General Sash

Anything involving "beautiful guls," or other sexual references

General Sash

Anything recalling an experience from a war, or recalling a recognition of being a soldier from the Civil War

General Sash

"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a state... "

George

"I could get along so easy and so nice if I didn't have you on my tail."

George

"I think I knowed from the very first. I think I knowed we'd never do her. He usta like to hear about it so much I got to thinking maybe we would."

George

"Someday, we're gonna get the jack together and we're gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an' a cow and some pigs and.."

George

"With us it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us."

George

"You jus' stand there and don't say nothing. If he finds out what a crazy bastard you are, we won't get no job, but if he sees ya work before he hears ya talk, we're set."

George

"My daddy wouldn't stand for nobody treatin any of us that way. My mama specially."

Hazel

"You a lyin' dawg."

Hazel

"cause I realized that just about anybody in my family is better than this god they always talkin about."

Hazel

complaints about a movie or relating to a movie theater

Hazel

complaints about adulthood, that do NOT sound like they come from Holden Caufield

Hazel

complaints about dishonesty or insincerity

Hazel

o "Look here, Hunca Bubba or Jefferson Windsong Vale or whatever your name is, you gonna marry this girl?"

Hazel

o "My name is Hazel. And what I mean is you said you were going to marry me when I grew up. You were going to wait. That's what I mean my dear Uncle Jefferson."

Hazel

"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'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all."

Holden

Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.

Holden

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

Holden

God, I wish you could've been there

Holden

I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

Holden

I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.

Holden

In my mind, I'm probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw

Holden

It's good food. It really is. You'd like it. You really would.

Holden

People never notice anything

Holden

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. . . . Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.

Holden

a sarcastic, quick to judge attitude, with opinionated topics

Holden

anything denouncing change or adulthood, and/or promoting childhood

Holden

anything talking about feeling the need to save

Holden

anything talking about loneliness or depression (the doesn't sound like Of Mice and Men)

Holden

most quotes relating to love and sex

Holden

most quotes without quotation marks with the word "you"

Holden

o "Well, for cryin out loud, Hazel, you just a little girl. And I was just teasin."

Hunca Bubba

"Policy is what the kingpins want. What the others want is juvenile delinquency."

Lengel

"An' live off the fatta the lan'."

Lennie

"But not us! An' why? Because... because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why."

Lennie

"George, you want I should go away and leave you alone?"

Lennie

If it's something that sounds mentally ill and doesn't have to do with religion

Lennie

"You got to take the crooked with the straights. That's what Papa used to say."

Lyons

Anything asking for money

Lyons

anything involving music

Lyons

o "She can have them, Mama"

Maggie

something sounding slightly odd, coming from someone intimidated

Maggie

o "God knows I been saving them up for long enough with nobody using them. I hope she will!

Mama

something self-conscious

Mama

"I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall. . . . The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. . . . So they gave up looking."

Mr. Antolini

academic advice in more of a berating manner

Old Spencer

"I been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life too. I gave eighteen years of my life to stand in the same spot with you. Don't you think I ever wanted other things? Don't you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me?"

Rose

"I'll take care of your baby for you cause she's innocent... and you can't visit the sins of the father upon the child... From right now, this child got a mother. But you a womanless man."

Rose

"fiddle de do"

Sammy

but it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it

Sammy

my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be for me hereafter

Sammy

you never know for sure how girls minds' work (do you really think it's a mind in there or just a buzz like a bee in a glass jar?).

Sammy

"You hadda, George, I swear you hadda. Come on with me."

Slim

If it sounds wise/compassionate and has to do with farming

Slim

"Liked you? Who the hell say I got to like you? What law is there say I got to like you? Wanna stand up in my face and ask a damn fool-ass question like that."

Troy

"Why you got the white mens driving and the colored lifting? What's the matter, don't I count?"

Troy

"death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner."

Troy

stories about baseball

Troy

"I was thinking.... does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?"

Walter Mitty

"Things close in"

Walter Mitty

any quote that relates to heroics, machinery (planes, doctors, surgeons, courtroom cases, etc.)

Walter Mitty

If the "quote" does not have quotation marks

it's from the narrator, which is likely to be Holden Caulfield (since he has the majority of these types of thoughts)

"If we forget our past, we won't remember our future and it will be as well for we won't have one."

speaker at Sally's graduation