Novel Wisdom: Nicholi and Salinger

I came across an article recently and it got me thinking. Some of the best advice I’ve received was from people I never knew and written years before I came along. I began jotting these thoughts down and realized later there was a reason behind it all, but that’s a topic for another post though. I kept the notes in a book for several years and I add to it frequently. This post kicks off a series where I’ll share a couple of highlights that stuck with me. Some are deep, some are funny, all are good.

• “Lewis asserts that the primary purpose of our lives – the reason for our existence on this planet -  is to establish a relationship with the person who placed us here.” – Dr. Armand Nicholi Jr, The Question of God
• “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of ‘just’ and ‘unjust’? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.” – C.S. Lewis, The Question of God
• “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And 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. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.” J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all the forest, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation of all his ancestors.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson