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Zooey Glass
Mrs. Glass is the wife of Les Glass and the mother of Seymour, Buddy, Boo Boo, Walt, Waker, Franny, and Zooey Glass. Mrs. Glass remains devastated by the deaths of two of her sons, Seymour by suicide and Walt in an accident during the U.S. Army’s occupation of Japan (1945–1952). After Franny has a minor breakdown and returns home to the family apartment from college, Mrs. Glass expresses her love by constantly offering Franny chicken soup and meddlesomely petitioning Franny’s siblings, primarily Zooey, to talk to Franny. In many ways, Mrs. Glass embraces the conventional, post-WWII U.S. society that Franny and Zooey find so alienating—she trusts in psychoanalysis and follows celebrity romances, for example—yet Zooey ultimately suggests to Franny that there is something mystical, holy, and worth recognizing in Mrs. Glass’s love for her children.
Mrs. Bessie Glass Quotes in Franny and Zooey
The Franny and Zooey quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. Bessie Glass or refer to Mrs. Bessie 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:
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Zooey
Quotes
As much as anything, it was the stare, not so paradoxically, of a privacy-lover who, once his privacy has been invaded, doesn’t quite approve when the invader just gets up and leaves, one-two-three, like that.
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“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?”
“You don’t even have enough sense to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup—which is the only kind of chicken soup Bessie ever brings to anybody around this madhouse.”
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Mrs. Bessie Glass Quotes in Franny and Zooey
The Franny and Zooey quotes below are all either spoken by Mrs. Bessie Glass or refer to Mrs. Bessie 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
As much as anything, it was the stare, not so paradoxically, of a privacy-lover who, once his privacy has been invaded, doesn’t quite approve when the invader just gets up and leaves, one-two-three, like that.
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“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?”
“You don’t even have enough sense to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup—which is the only kind of chicken soup Bessie ever brings to anybody around this madhouse.”
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