“When you're dead, they really fix you up. 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.”

American writer

Jerome David Salinger was an American writer of the 20th century, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye. Born in 1919 and active for much of the mid-century, he became a private and influential literary figure. He published several short stories in Story magazine in 1940, before serving in World War II. In 1948, The New Yorker published his acclaimed story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” and the magazine later carried much of his work. His writing is most closely associated with fiction that captured private, unsettled lives with unusual force.