“But the thing is, the marvelous thing is, when you first start doing it, you don’t even have to have faith in what you’re doing. I mean even if you’re terribly embarrassed about the whole thing, it’s perfectly all right. I mean you’re not insulting anybody or anything. In other words, nobody asks you to believe a single thing when you start out. You don’t even have to think about what you’re saying, the sarets said. All you have to have in the beginning is quantity. Then, later on, it becomes quality by itself. On its own power or something. He says that any name of God – any name at all – has this peculiar, self-active power of its own, and it starts working after you’ve sort of started it up.” – Franny
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“I don’t care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, in can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I’ll tell you a terrible secret – Are you listening to me? There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn’t anyone anywhere that isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that goddam secret yet? And don’t you know – listen to me, now – don’t you know who that Fat Lady really is? … Ah, buddy. It’s Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.” – and Zooey
[btw, I always imagined the dialogue in these two stories to be the more suitable adaptation for film than Holden’s whiny jaunt around New York. Glad to find out a good friend actually took a stab at such an effort.]