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Lane Coutell
The oldest Glass sibling, Seymour was the first (and widely considered the best) child host of the radio program “It’s A Wise Child.” As a young man, he served in World War II; after returning from the war, he died by suicide. Though Seymour does not appear in Franny and Zooey, grief for him hangs over the lives of his younger siblings Buddy, Franny, and Zooey, all of whom remember him as an intelligent, funny, kind, wise, and mysterious person. When Franny and Zooey were children, Seymour and Buddy tried to educate them in the world religions’ mystical traditions, an education that partially explains college-student Franny’s fascination with The Way of A Pilgrim, a religious text she found on Seymour’s desk. Zooey resents Seymour and Buddy because he feels that their mystical education turned him and Franny into “freaks.”
Seymour Glass Quotes in Franny and Zooey
The Franny and Zooey quotes below are all either spoken by Seymour Glass or refer to Seymour Glass. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Zooey
Quotes
I know the difference between a mystical story and a love story. I say that my current offering isn’t a mystical story, or a religiously mystifying story, at all. I say it’s a compound, or multiple, love story, pure and complicated.
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I can’t help thinking that you’d make a damn site better-adjusted actor if Seymour and I hadn’t thrown in the Upanishads and the Diamond Sutra and Eckhart and all our other old loves with the rest of your recommended home reading when you were small.
Seymour once said to me—in a crosstown bus, of all places—that all legitimate religious study must lead to unlearning the differences, the illusory differences, between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold.
“You can’t live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes[.]”
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“This whole goddam house stinks of ghosts. I don’t mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one. I wish to God Buddy’d make up his mind. He does everything else Seymour ever did—or tries to. Why the hell doesn’t he kill himself and be done with it?”
“Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that’s all. We’re the Tattooed Lady, and we’re never going to have a minute’s peace, the rest of our lives, till everybody else is tattooed too.”
“There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. […] And don’t you know—listen to me, now—don’t you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It’s Christ Himself.”
Get the entire Franny and Zooey LitChart as a printable PDF.
Seymour Glass Quotes in Franny and Zooey
The Franny and Zooey quotes below are all either spoken by Seymour Glass or refer to Seymour Glass. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Zooey
Quotes
I know the difference between a mystical story and a love story. I say that my current offering isn’t a mystical story, or a religiously mystifying story, at all. I say it’s a compound, or multiple, love story, pure and complicated.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
I can’t help thinking that you’d make a damn site better-adjusted actor if Seymour and I hadn’t thrown in the Upanishads and the Diamond Sutra and Eckhart and all our other old loves with the rest of your recommended home reading when you were small.
Seymour once said to me—in a crosstown bus, of all places—that all legitimate religious study must lead to unlearning the differences, the illusory differences, between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold.
“You can’t live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes[.]”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“This whole goddam house stinks of ghosts. I don’t mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one. I wish to God Buddy’d make up his mind. He does everything else Seymour ever did—or tries to. Why the hell doesn’t he kill himself and be done with it?”
“Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that’s all. We’re the Tattooed Lady, and we’re never going to have a minute’s peace, the rest of our lives, till everybody else is tattooed too.”
“There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. […] And don’t you know—listen to me, now—don’t you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It’s Christ Himself.”
