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.
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This quote is from the end of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger when Holden explains is wish to be the catcher who saves kids, like his sister, from going over that crazy cliff into the phony world of adulthood.