What made it even more depressing, old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he was probably born in or something.

I'm not too crazy about sick people, anyway. He was reading The Atlantic Monthly, and there were pills and medicine all over the place, and everything smelled like Vicks Nose Drops. The minute I went in, I was sort of sorry I'd come. Make sense? Now compare this to the last paragraph of the novel, where Holden says not to tell stories, as you then miss the people in them. Here, however, he seems to decide that he would rather feel sad about leaving a place than feel sad about the fact that he doesn't get to feel connected enough to feel sad. Hello, paradox: Holden wants to make connections with people (or, in this case, with places), but to do so means to make an emotional investment that will probably end up depressing him. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. Everything you said made him sore.What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of good-by. He was about the touchiest guy I ever met. “You’re goddam right they don’t,” Horwitz said, and drove off like a bat out of hell. “If you was a fish, Mother Nature’d take care of you, wouldn’t she? Right? You don’t think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?”

They stay right where they are, the fish. He turned all the way around again, and said, “The fish don’t go no place. I stopped having a conversation with him, if he was going to get so damn touchy about it. “How the hell should I know a stupid thing like that?” Old Horwitz turned all the way around and looked at me. Do you know, by any chance? I mean does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or do they fly away by themselves – go south or something?” You’d think a prostitute and all would say “Like hell you are” or “Cut the crap” instead of “Like fun you are.” She didn’t care what the hell my name was, naturally. She never said thank you, either, when you offered her something. She had a tiny little wheeny-whiny voice. I sat down in the big chair, next to her, and offered her a cigarette. I think it was because she was young as hell. She crossed her legs and started jiggling this one foot up and down. Then she sort of sat down sideways on the chair that went with the desk in the room and started jiggling her foot up and down. She came in and took her coat off right away and sort of chucked it on the bed.

Catcher in the rye conflict quotes