I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in a big field of rye and all. ... Thousands of kids, and nobody big at all, nobody big but me. And I'm standing on the edge of this crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to come and catch them. If they start to fall ... and don't look where they're going. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.

J. D. Salinger passed away today. He was 91. Catcher in the Rye was one of the first books I read as a young teenager that really seem to speak to my blossoming sexuality and awareness. I no longer felt alone in my crazy world of fantasies and dreams. The world seemed larger and I was just a part of it and longer the center of my universe. I then went on to read Franny and Zoey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Nine Stories. His books spoke to me in time when I needed a voice other than my own in my head. Rest in peace.