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Amory Wondered How People Could Fail To Notice That He Was A Boy Marked For Glory, And When Faces Of The Throng Turned Toward Him And Ambiguous Eyes Stared Into His, He Assumed The Most Romantic Of Expressions And Walked On The Air Cushions That Lie On The Asphalts Of Fourteen.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Amory Wondered How People

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Amory Wondered How People Could Fail To Notice That He Was A Boy Marked For Glory, And When Faces Of The Throng Turned Toward Him And Ambiguous Eyes Stared Into His, He Assumed The Most Romantic Of Expressions And Walked On The Air Cushions That Lie On The Asphalts Of Fourteen.

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So We Beat On, Boats Against The Current, Borne Back Ceaselessly Into The Past.

He Did Not Understand All He Had Heard, But From His Clandestine Glimpse Into The Privacy Of These Two, With All The World That His Short Experience Could Conceive Of At Their Feet, He Had Gathered That Life For Everybody Was A Struggle, Sometimes Magnificent From A Distance, But Always Difficult And Surprisingly Simple And A Little Sad.

I’m Thirty,” I Said. “i’m Five Years Too Old To Lie To Myself And Call It Honor

Praise The Power That Hath Made And Preserved Us A Nation. Then Conquer We Must, For Our Cause It Is Just, And This Be Our Motto: "in God Is Our Trust." And The Star-spangled Banner Forever Shall Wave O'er The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave!

The Notion Of Sitting Down And Conjuring Up, Not Only Words In Which To Clothe Thoughts But Thoughts Worthy Of Being Clothed--the Whole Thing Was Absurdly Beyond His Desires.

Have A Drink Tom And Then You Won't Feel So Foolish To Yourself.

I Didn't Realize It, But The Days Came Along One After Another, And Then Two Years Were Gone, And Everything Was Gone, And I Was Gone.

Let Us Learn To Show Our Friendship For A Man When He Is Alive And Not After He Is Dead.

I Thought Of Gatsby's Wonder When He First Picked Out The Green Light At The End Of Daisy's Dock. He Had Come A Long Way To This Lawn And His Dream Must Have Seemed So Close That He Could Hardly Fail To Grasp It. He Did Not Know That It Was Already Behind Him. [- Nick Carroway]

Scratch A Yale Man With Both Hands And You'll Be Lucky To Find A Coast-guard. Usually You Find Nothing At All.

Receding From Grief, It Seems Necessary To Retrace The Same Steps That Brought Us There.

Every Author Ought To Write Every Book As If He Were Going To Be Beheaded The Day He Finished It.

I Fell In Love With Her Courage, Her Sincerity, And Her Flaming Self Respect. And It's These Things I'd Believe In, Even If The Whole World Indulged In Wild Suspicions That She Wasn't All She Should Be. I Love Her And It Is The Beginning Of Everything.

Family Quarrels Are Bitter Things. They Don't Go According To Any Rules. They're Not Like Aches Or Wounds, They're More Like Splits In The Skin That Won't Heal Because There's Not Enough Material.

I Wish I Could Write. I Get These Ideas But I Never Seem To Be Able To Put Them In Words.

Her Grey, Sun-strained Eyes Stared Straight Ahead, But She Had Deliberately Shifted Our Relations, And For A Moment I Thought I Loved Her. But I Am Slow-thinking And Full Of Interior Rules That Act As Brakes On My Desires, And I Knew That First I Had To Get Myself Definitely Out Of That Tangle Back Home.

This Is What I Think Now: That The Natural State Of The Sentient Adult Is A Qualified Unhappiness.

But They Were Frightened At His Survivant Will, Once A Will To Live, Now Become A Will To Die.

Happiness, Remarked Maury Noble One Day, Is Only The First Hour After The Alleviation Of Some Especially Intense Misery.

I Wasn't Actually In Love, But I Felt A Sort Of Tender Curiosity.

Murder Your Darlings.

The Unwelcome November Rain Had Perversely Stolen The Day's Last Hour And Pawned It With That Ancient Fence, The Night.

Young People Do Not Perceive At Once That The Giver Of Wounds Is The Enemy And The Quoted Tattle Merely The Arrow.

It Is In The Thirties That We Want Friends. In The Forties We Know They Won't Save Us Any More Than Love Did.

He's A Bootlegger....one Time He Killed A Man Who Found Out That He Was Nephew To Von Hindenburg And Second Cousin To The Devil.

The Best Contacts Are When One Knows The Obstacles And Still Wants To Preserve A Relation.

Tender Is The Night

He Used To Think That He Wanted To Be Good, He Wanted To Be Kind, He Wanted To Be Brave And Wise, But It Was All Pretty Difficult. He Wanted To Be Loved, Too, If He Could Fit It In.

For A Transitory Enchanted Moment Man Must Have Held His Breath In The Presence Of This Continent, Compelled Into An Aesthetic Contemplation He Neither Understood Nor Desired, Face To Face For The Last Time In History With Something Commensurate To His Capacity For Wonder.

In Short, You Have Only Your Emotions To Sell. This Is The Experience Of All Writers.

Cut Out All These Exclamation Points. An Exclamation Point Is Like Laughing At Your Own Joke.

He Was So Terrible That He Was No Longer Terrible, Only Dehumanized.

Genius Goes Around The World In Its Youth Incessantly Apologizing For Having Large Feet. What Wonder That Later In Life It Should Be Inclined To Raise Those Feet Too Swiftly To Fools And Bores.

Life Is Essentially A Cheat And Its Conditions Are Those Of Defeat; The Redeeming Things Are Not Happiness And Pleasure But The Deeper Satisfactions That Come Out Of Struggle.

Youth Is Like Having A Big Plate Of Candy. Sentimentalists Think They Want To Be In The Pure, Simple State They Were In Before They Ate The Candy. They Don't. They Just Want The Fun Of Eating It All Over Again.

He Was Going To Live In New York, And Be Known At Every Restaurant And Café, Wearing A Dress Suit From Early Evening To Early Morning, Sleeping Away The Dull Hours Of The Forenoon.

Wine Gave A Sort Of Gallantry To Their Own Failure.

When Vanity Kissed Vanity, A Hundred Happy Junes Ago, He Pondered O'er Her Breathlessly, And, That All Men Might Ever Know, He Rhymed Her Eyes With Life And Death: "thru Time I'll Save My Love!" He Said. . . Yet Beauty Vanished With His Breath, And, With Her Lovers, She Was Dead. . . -ever His Wit And Not Her Eyes, Ever His Art And Not Her Hair: "who'd Learn A Trick In Rhyme, Be Wise And Pause Before His Sonnet There". . . So All My Words, However True, Might Sing You To A Thousandth June, And No One Ever Know That You Were Beauty For An Afternoon.

This Is A Valley Of Ashes--a Fantastic Farm Where Ashes Grow Like Wheat Into Ridges And Hills And Grotesque Gardens; Where Ashes Take The Forms Of Houses And Chimneys And Rising Smoke And, Finally, With A Transcendent Effort, Of Men Who Move Dimly And Already Crumbling Through The Powdery Air. Occasionally A Line Of Gray Cars Crawls Along An Invisible Track, Gives Out A Ghastly Creak, And Comes To Rest, And Immediately The Ash-gray Men Swarm Up With Leaden Spades And Stir Up An Impenetrable Cloud, Which Screens Their Obscure Operations From Your Sight.

And That Taught Me You Can't Have Anything, You Can't Have Anything At All. Because Desire Just Cheats You. It's Like A Sunbeam Skipping Here And There About A Room. It Stops And Gilds Some Inconsequential Object, And We Poor Fools Try To Grasp It - But When We Do The Sunbeam Moves On To Something Else, And You've Got The Inconsequential Part, But The Glitter That Made You Want It Is Gone.

Let's Borrow Life Preservers And Jump Over. I Think We Should Do Something Spectacular. I Feel That All Our Lives Have Been Too Restrained.

There Are Only The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy And The Tired.

Great Gatsby American Dream

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It Was Always The Becoming He Dreamed Of, Never The Being.

When People Are Taken Out Of Their Depths They Lose Their Heads, No Matter How Charming A Bluff They May Put Up.

And, After Boasting This Way Of My Tolerance, I Come To The Admission That It Has A Limit. Conduct May Be Founded On The Hard Rock Or The Wet Marshes, But After A Certain Point I Don’t Care What It’s Founded On. When I Came Back From The East Last Autumn I Felt That I Wanted The World To Be In Uniform And At A Sort Of Moral Attention Forever; I Wanted No More Riotous Excursions With Privileged Glimpses Into The Human Heart. Only Gatsby, The Man Who Gives His Name To This Book, Was Exempt From My Reaction—gatsby, Who Represented Everything For Which I Have An Unaffected Scorn.

I've Given Parties That Have Made Indian Rajahs Green With Envy. I've Had Prima Donnas Break $10,000 Engagements To Come To My Smallest Dinners. When You Were Still Playing Button Back In Ohio, I Entertained On A Cruising Trip That Was So Much Fun That I Had To Sink My Yacht To Make My Guests Go Home.

Having Once Found The Intensity Of Art, Nothing Else That Can Happen In Life Can Ever Again Seem As Important As The Creative Process.

I Hope Something Happens. I'm Restless As The Devil And Have A Horror Of Getting Fat Or Falling In Love And Growing Domestic.

Falling In Love

You Are Mine-you Know You're Mine!" He Cried Wildly...the Moonlight Twisted In Through The Vines And Listened...the Fireflies Hung Upon Their Whispers As If To Win His Glance From The Glory Of Their Eyes.

Reserving Judgements Is A Matter Of Infinite Hope.

Reporting The Extreme Things As If They Were The Average Things Will Start You On The Art Of Fiction.

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Her Fine High Forehead Sloped Gently Up To Where Her Hair, Bordering It Like An Armorial Shield, Burst Into Lovelocks And Waves And Curlicues Of Ash Blonde And Gold. Her Eyes Were Bright, Big, Clear, Wet And Shining, The Colour Of Her Cheeks Was Real, Breaking Close To The Surface From The Strong Young Pump Of Her Heart. Her Body Hovered Delicately On The Last Edge Of Childhood -- She Was Almost Eighteen, Nearly Complete, But The Dew Was Still On Her.

Grown Up, And That Is A Terribly Hard Thing To Do. It Is Much Easier To Skip It And Go From One Childhood To Another.

First, He Realized That The Sea Was Blue And That There Was An Enormous Quantity Of It, And That It Roared And Roared-really All The Banalities About The Ocean That One Could Realize, But If Any One Had Told Him Then That These Things Were Banalities, He Would Have Gaped In Wonder.

Enormous Quantities

Understand Now, I'm Purely A Fiction Writer And Do Not Profess To Be An Earnest Student Of Political Science, But I Believe Strongly That Such A Law As One Prohibiting Liquor Is Foolish, And All The Writers, Keenly Interested In Human Welfare Whom I Know, Laugh At The Prohibition Law.

There's No Substitute For Will. Sometimes You Have To Fake Will When You Don't Feel It At All.

Given A Decent Start Any Girl Can Beat A Man Nowadays.

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It Is Youth’s Felicity As Well As Its Insufficiency That It Can Never Live In The Present, But Must Always Be Measuring Up The Day Against Its Own Radiantly Imagined Future

Live In The Present

You Said A Bad Driver Was Only Safe Until She Met Another Bad Driver? Well, I Met Another Bad Driver, Didn't I? I Mean It Was Careless Of Me To Makes Such A Wrong Guess. I Thought You Were Rather An Honest, Straightforward Person I Thought It Was Your Secret Pride." "i'm Thirty," I Said. "i'm Five Years Too Old To Lie To Myself And Call It Honor." She Didn't Answer. Angry, And Half In Love With Her, And Tremendously Sorry, I Turned Away.

That's The Whole Burden Of This Novel - The Loss Of Those Illusions That Give Such Color To The World That You Don't Care Whether Things Are True Or False As Long As They Partake Of The Magical Glory.

Angry, And Half In Love With Her, And Tremendously Sorry, I Turned Away.

Great Gatsby Love

To A Profound Pessimist About Life, Being In Danger Is Not Depressing.

Then It Had Not Been Merely The Stars To Which He Had Aspired On That June Night. He Came Alive To Me, Delivered Suddenly From The Womb Of His Purposeless Splendour.

Tomorrow We Will Run Faster, Stretch Out Our Arms Farther.

I Want Leisure To Read—an Immense Amount.

His Dream Must Have Seemed So Close That He Could Hardly Fail To Grasp It. He Did Not Know That It Was Already Behind Him.

I Have Lived Hard And Ruined The Essential Innocence [sic] In Myself That Could Make It That Possible [sic], And The Fact That I Have Abused Liquor Is Something To Be Paid For With Suffering And Death Perhaps But Not Renunciation.

Suffering And Death

Let Me Tell You About The Very Rich. They Are Different From You And Me.

Sometimes I Think That Idlers Seem To Be A Special Class For Whom Nothing Can Be Planned, Plead As One Will With Them - Their Only Contribution To The Human Family Is To Warm A Seat At The Common Table.

Interested, I Mean, With That Intense Personal Interest To Which Every One Has Some Vague Right At The End

Too Much Of Anything Is Bad, But Too Much Champagne Is Just Right.

Long Ago, There Was Something In Me, But Now That Thing Is Gone. Now That Thing Is Gone, That Thing Is Gone. I Cannot Cry. I Cannot Care. That Thing Will Come Back No More.

It's A Mining Town In Lotus Land.

Americans, While Occasionally Willing To Be Serfs, Have Always Been Obstinate About Being Peasantry.

Great Gatsby American Dream

Great Gatsby Book

Great Gatsby Important

I Was Rather Literary In College—one Year I Wrote A Series Of Very Solemn And Obvious Editorials For The 'yale News.'—and Now I Was Going To Bring Back All Such Things Into My Life And Become Again That Most Limited Of All Specialists, The 'well-rounded Man.' This Isn’t Just An Epigram—life Is Much More Successfully Looked At From A Single Window, After All.

The Things That'll Make You Fail I'll Love Always.

But His Heart Was In A Constant, Turbulent Riot.

I Don't Want To Repeat My Innocence. I Want The Pleasure Of Losing It Again.

The Mind Of A Little Child Is Fascinating, For It Looks On Old Things With New Eyes-but At About Twelve This Changes. The Adolescent Offers Nothing, Can Do Nothing, Say Nothing That The Adult Cannot Do Better.

The Montana Sunset Lay Between The Mountains Like A Giant Bruise From Which Darkened Arteries Spread Across A Poisoned Sky.

A Squalid Phantasmagoria Of Breath

Then A Strange Thing Happened. She Turned To Him And Smiled, And As He Saw Her Smile Every Rag Of Anger And Hurt Vanity Dropped From Him — As Though His Very Moods Were But The Outer Ripples Of Her Own, As Though Emotion Rose No Longer In His Breast Unless She Saw Fit To Pull An Omnipotent Controlling Thread.

A Stirring Warmth Flowed From Her, As If Her Heart Was Trying To Come Out To You Concealed In One Of Those Breathless, Thrilling Words.

Intermittently She Caught The Gist Of His Sentences And Supplied The Rest From Her Subconscious, As One Picks Up The Striking Of A Clock In The Middle With Only The Rhythm Of The First Uncounted Strokes Lingering In The Mind.

It Makes Me Sad Because I've Never Seen Such--such Beautiful Shirts Before.

Great Gatsby American Dream

Experience Is Not Worth The Getting. It's Not A Thing That Happens Pleasantly To A Passive You--it's A Wall That An Active You Runs Up Against.

Beware The Artist Who's An Intellectual Also. The Artist Who Doesn't Fit.

The Extraordinary Thing Is Not That People In A Lifetime Turn Out Worse Or Better Than We Had Prophesied; Particularly In America That Is To Be Expected. The Extraordinary Thing Is How People Keep Their Levels, Fulfill Their Promises, Seem Actually Buoyed Up By An Inevitable Destiny.

I Know Myself," He Cried, "but That Is All-

Now The Standard Cure For One Who Is Sunk Is To Consider Those In Actual Destitution Or Physical Suffering—this Is An All-weather Beatitude For Gloom In General And Fairly Salutary Day-time Advice For Everyone. But At Three O’clock In The Morning, A Forgotten Package Has The Same Tragic Importance As A Death Sentence, And The Cure Doesn’t Work—and In A Real Dark Night Of The Soul It Is Always Three O’clock In The Morning, Day After Day.

Here's To Alcohol, The Rose Colored Glasses Of Life.

What A Wonderful Song, She Thought-everything Was Wonderful Tonight, Most Of All This Romantic Scene In The Den With Their Hands Clinging And The Inevitable Looming Charmingly Close. The Future Vista Of Her Life Seemed An Unending Succession Of Scenes Like This: Under Moonlight And Pale Starlight, And In The Backs Of Warm Limousines And In Low Cosy Roadsters Stopped Under Sheltering Trees-only The Boy Might Change, And This One Was So Nice.

The Purpose Of A Work Of Fiction Is To Appeal To The Lingering After-effects In The Reader's Mind As Differing From, Say, The Purpose Of Oratory Or Philosophy Which Respectively Leave People In A Fighting Or Thoughtful Mood.

As Soon As I Arrived I Made An Attempt To Find My Host But The Two Or Three People Of Whom I Asked His Whereabouts Stared At Me In Such An Amazed Way And Denied So Vehemently An Knowledge Of His Movements That I Slunk Off In The Direction Of The Cocktail Table--the Only Place In The Garden Where A Single Man Could Linger Without Looking Purposeless And Alone.

Women Are Necessarily Capable Of Almost Anything In Their Struggle For Survival And Can Scarcely Be Convicted Of Such Man-made Crimes As “cruelty.

Her Beautiful Eyes And Lips Were Very Grave As She Made Her Choice, And Anthony Thought Again How Naive Was Her Every Gesture; She Took All The Things Of Life For Hers To Choose From And Apportion, As Though She Were Continually Picking Out Presents For Herself From An Inexhaustible Counter.

Courage To Me Means Ploughing Through That Dull Gray Mist That Comes Down On Life-not Only Overriding People And Circumstances But Overriding The Bleakness Of Living. A Sort Of Insistence On The Value Of Life And The Worth Of Transient Things...my Courage Is Faith-faith In The Eternal Resilience Of Me-that Joy'll Come Back, And Hope And Spontaneity. And I Feel That Till It Does, I've Got To Keep My Lips Shut And My Chin High, And My Eyes Wide

She Knew Few Words And Believed In None.

I'm Inclined To Reserve All Judgement, A Habit That Has Opened Up Many Curious Natures To Me And Made Me The Victim Of Not A Few Veteran Bores. The Abnormal Mind Is Quick To Detect And Attach Itself To This Quality When It Appears In A Normal Person, And So It Came About That In College I Was Unjustly Accused Of Being A Politician, Because I Was Privy To The Secret Griefs Of Wild, Unknown Men.

Then He Kissed Her. At His Lips' Touch She Blossomed For Him Like A Flower And The Incarnation Was Complete.

Great Gatsby Love

I Guess I'm The Black Death,' He Said Slowly. 'i Don't Seem To Bring People Happiness Any More.

One Girl Can Be Pretty - But A Dozen Are Only A Chorus.

When The Lightning Strikes One Of Us, It Strikes Both

"if It Wasn’t For The Mist We Could See Your Home Across The Bay," Said Gatsby. "you Always Have A Green Light That Burns At The End Of Your Dock." Daisy Put Her Arm Through His Abruptly But He Seemed Absorbed In What He Had Just Said. Possibly It Had Occurred To Him That The Colossal Significance Of That Light Had Now Vanished Forever. Compared To The Great Distance That Had Separated Him From Daisy It Had Seemed Very Near To Him, Almost Touching Her. It Had Seemed As Close As A Star To The Moon. Now It Was Again A Green Light On A Dock. His Count Of Enchanted Things Had Diminished By One.

She Felt A Little Betrayed And Sad, But Presently A Moving Object Came Into Sight. It Was A Huge Horse-chestnut Tree In Full Bloom Bound For The Champs Elysees, Strapped Now Into A Long Truck And Simply Shaking With Laughter - Like A Lovely Person In An Undignified Position Yet Confident None The Less Of Being Lovely. Looking At It With Fascination, Rosemary Identified Herself With It, And Laughed Cheerfully With It, And Everything All At Once Seemed Gorgeous.

If All Your Clothes Are Worn To The Same State, It Means You Go Out Too Much.

I Love New York On Summer Afternoons When Everyone's Away. There's Something Very Sensuous About It - Overripe, As If All Sorts Of Funny Fruits Were Going To Fall Into Your Hands.

I Was Haunted Always By My Other Life-my Drab Room In The Bronx, My Square Foot Of The Subway, My Fixation Upon The Day's Letter From Alabama-would It Come And What Would It Say?-my Shabby Suits, My Poverty, And Love. While My Friends Were Launching Decently Into Life I Had Muscled My Inadequate Bark Into Midstream... I Was A Failure-mediocre At Advertising Work And Unable To Get Started As A Writer. Hating The City, I Got Roaring, Weeping Drunk On My Last Penny And Went Home.

She Was Feeling The Pressure Of The World Outside And She Wanted To See Him And Feel His Presence Beside Her And Be Reassured That She Was Doing The Right Thing After All.

Lie To Me By The Moonlight. Do A Fabulous Story.

I Felt A Haunting Loneliness Sometimes, And Felt It In Others--young Clerks In The Dusk, Wasting The Most Poignant Moments Of Night And Life.

For The Moment I Can Only Cry Out That I Have Lost My Splendid Mirage. Come Back, Come Back, O Glittering And White!

So We'll Just Let Things Take Their Course, And Never Be Sorry.

Life Cracked Like Ice!

There Is A Moment—oh, Just Before The First Kiss, A Whispered Word—something That Makes It Worth While.

I Hope You Make The Best Of It. And I Hope You See Things That Startle You. I Hope You Feel Things You Never Felt Before. I Hope You Meet People With A Different Point Of View. I Hope You Live A Life You're Proud Of. If You Find That You're Not, I Hope You Have The Strength To Start All Over Again.

She Wanted To Exist Only As A Conscious Flower, Prolonging And Preserving Herself

I Talk With The Authority Of Failure - Ernest With The Authority Of Success. We Could Never Sit Across The Same Table Again.

It Takes A Genius To Whine Appealingly.

That However The Brains And Abilities Of Men May Differ, Their Stomachs Are Essentially The Same.

The Early Twenties When We Drank Wood Alcohol And Every Day In Every Way Grew Better And Better, And There Was A First Abortive Shortening Of The Skirts, And Girls All Looked Alike In Sweater Dresses, And People You Didn't Want To Know Said "yes, We Have No Bananas," And It Seemed Only A Question Of A Few Years Before The Older People Would Step Aside And Let The World Be Run By Those Who Saw Things As They Were--and It All Seems Rosy And Romantic To Us Who Were Young Then, Because We Will Never Feel Quite So Intensely About Our Surroundings Any More.

My Latest Tendency Is To Collapse About 11:00 And With The Tears Flowing From My Eyes Or The Gin Rising To Their Level And Leaking Over, And Tell Interested Friends Or Acquaintances That I Haven't A Friend In The World And Likewise Care For Nobody.

Well, Let It Pass, He Thought; April Is Over, April Is Over. There Are All Kinds Of Love In The World, But Never The Same Love Twice. --the Sensible Thing

It Was Dawn Now On Long Island And We Went About Opening The Rest Of The Windows Downstairs, Filling The House With Gray-turning, Gold-turning Light. The Shadow Of A Tree Fell Abruptly Across The Dew And Ghostly Birds Began To Sing Among The Blue Leaves. There Was A Slow, Pleasant Movement In The Air, Scarcely A Wind, Promising A Cool, Lovely Day.

These Lights, This Brightness, These Clusters Of Human Hope, Of Wild Desire—i Shall Take These Lights In My Fingers. I Shall Make Them Bright, And Whether They Shine Or Not, It Is In These Fingers That They Shall Succeed Or Fail.

If I Knew Words Enough, I Could Write The Longest Love Letter In The World And Never Get Tired

The Best Of America Drifts To Paris. The American In Paris Is The Best American.

I’m Not Sure What I’ll Do, But— Well, I Want To Go Places And See People. I Want My Mind To Grow. I Want To Live Where Things Happen On A Big Scale.

We All Must Try To Be Good.

That Voice Was A Deathless Song.

To Have Something To Say Is A Question Of Sleepless Nights And Worry And Endless Ratiocination Of Subject - Of Endless Trying To Dig Out The Essential Truth, The Essential Justice. As A First Premise You Have To Develop A Conscience And If On Top Of That You Have Talent So Much The Better. But If You Have Talent Without The Conscience, You Are Just One Of Many Thousands Of Journalists.

One Writes Of Scars Healed, A Loose Parallel To The Pathology Of The Skin, But There Is No Such Thing In The Life Of An Individual.

Egyptian Proverb: The Worst Things: To Be In Bed And Sleep Not, To Want For One Who Comes Not, To Try To Please And Please Not.

I'm Merely Trying To Give You The Sort Of Argument That Would Appeal To Your Intelligence.

A Sudden Gust Of Rain Blew Over Them And Then Another - As If Small Liquid Clouds Were Bouncing Along The Land. Lightning Entered The Sea Far Off And The Air Blew Full Of Crackling Thunder. The Table Cloths Blew Around The Pillars. They Blew And Blew And Blew. The Flags Twisted Around The Red Chairs Like Live Things, The Banners Were Ragged, The Corners Of The Table Tore Off Through The Burbling Billowing Ends Of The Cloths.

At Any Rate, Let Us Love For A While, For A Year Or So, You And Me. That's A Form Of Divine Drunkenness That We Can All Try. There Are Only Diamonds In The Whole World, Diamonds And Perhaps The Shabby Gift Of Disillusion.

A Love Affair Is Like A Short Story--it Has A Beginning, A Middle, And An End. The Beginning Was Easy, The Middle Might Drag, Invaded By Commonplace, But The End, Instead Of Being Decisive And Well Knit With That Element Of Revelatory Surprise As A Well-written Story Should Be, It Usually Dissipated In A Succession Of Messy And Humiliating Anticlimaxes.

But I Felt That Tom Would Drift On Forever Seeking, A Little Wistfully, For The Dramatic Turbulence Of Some Irrecoverable Football Game

Can't Repeat The Past?" He Cried Incredulously. "why Of Course You Can!" He Looked Around Him Wildly, As If The Past Were Lurking Here In The Shadow Of His House, Just Out Of Reach Of His Hand.

Possibly It Had Occurred To Him The Colossal Significance Of That Light Had Now Vanished Forever. [...] It Had Seemed As Close As A Star To The Moon. Now It Was A Green Light On A Dock. His Count Of Enchanted Objects Had Diminished By One.

This Unlikely Story Begins On A Sea That Was A Blue Dream, As Colorful As Blue-silk Stockings, And Beneath A Sky As Blue As The Irises Of Children's Eyes.

If He Had To Bring All The Bitterness And Hatred Of The World Into His Heart, He Was Not Going To Be In Love With Her Again.

You’re Just The Romantic Age,” She Continued- “fifty. Twenty-five Is Too Worldly Wise; Thirty Is Apt To Be Pale From Overwork; Forty Is The Age Of Long Stories That Take A Whole Cigar To Tell; Sixty Is- Oh, Sixty Is Too Near Seventy; But Fifty Is The Mellow Age. I Love Fifty.” - Hildegarde

And After Reading Thoreau I Felt How Much I Have Lost By Leaving Nature Out Of My Life.

The Growth Of Intimacy Is Like That. First One Gives Off His Best Picture, The Bright And Finished Product Mended With Bluff And Falsehood And Humour. Then More Details Are Required And One Paints A Second Portrait, And A Third – Before Long The Best Lines Cancel Out – And The Secret Is Exposed At Last; The Planes Of The Pictures Have Intermingled And Given Us Away, And Though We Paint And Paint We Can No Longer Sell A Picture. We Must Be Satisfied With Hoping That Such Fatuous Accounts Of Ourselves As We Make To Our Wives And Children And Business Associates Are Accepted As True

Ernest [hemmingway] Was Always Ready To Lend A Helping Hand To The One On The Rung Above Him.

I Was A Little Shocked At The Elaborateness Of The Lie.

He Found Himself Remembering How On One Summer Morning They Two Had Started From New York In Search Of Happiness. They Had Never Expected To Find It, Perhaps, Yet In Itself That Quest Had Been Happier Than Anything He Expected Forevermore. Life, It Seemed, Must Be A Setting Up Of Props Around One - Otherwise It Was Disaster. There Was No Rest, No Quiet. He Had Been Futile In Longing To Drift And Dream, No One Drifted Except To Maelstroms, No One Dreamed, Without His Dreams Becoming Fantastic Nightmares Of Indecision And Regret.

He Looked At Her The Way All Women Want To Be Looked At By A Man.

Either You Think, Or Else Others Have To Think For You And Take Power From You, Pervert And Discipline Your Natural Tastes, Civilize And Sterilize You.

She Looked At Me And Laughed Pointlessly. Then She Flounced Over To The Dog, Kissed It With Ecstasy, And Swept Into The Kitchen, Implying That A Dozen Chefs Awaited Her Orders There.

He Was Figuratively Following Along Beside Her As She Walked The Fence, Ready To Catch Her If She Should Fall.

Life Was A Damned Muddle - A Football Game With Everyone Offside And The Referee Gotten Rid Of - Everyone Claiming The Referee Would Have Been On His Side.

Never Miss A Party...good For The Nerves--like Celery.

Take Off That Darn Fur Coat!...or Maybe You'd Like To Have Us Open All The Windows.

It Appears That Every Man's Insomnia Is As Different From His Neighbours As Are Their Daytime Hopes And Aspirations.

Her Face Was Sad And Lovely With Bright Things In It, Bright Eyes And A Bright Passionate Mouth, But There Was An Excitement In Her Voice That Men Who Had Cared For Her Found Difficult To Forget: A Singing Compulsion, A Whispered “listen,” A Promise That She Had Done Gay, Exciting Things Just A While Since And That There Were Gay, Exciting Things Hovering In The Next Hour.

It Was Too Late - Everything Was Too Late. For Years Now He Had Dreamed The World Away, Basing His Decisions Upon Emotions Unstable As Water.

I See Now That This Has Been A Story Of The West, After All--tom And Gatsby, Daisy And Jordan And I, Were All Westerners, And Perhaps We Possessed Some Deficiency In Common Which Made Us Subtly Unadaptable To Eastern Life.

My God,' He Gasped, 'you're Fun To Kiss.

He Must Have Felt That He Had Lost The Old Warm World, Paid A High Price For Living Too Long With A Single Dream. He Must Have Looked Up At An Unfamiliar Sky Through Frightening Leaves And Shivered As He Found What A Grotesque Thing A Rose Is And How Raw The Sunlight Was Upon The Scarcely Created Grass. A New World, Material Without Being Real, Where Poor Ghosts, Breathing Dreams Like Air, Drifted Fortuitously About...like That Ashen, Fantastic Figure Gliding Toward Him Through The Amorphous Trees.

Mother Says That Two Souls Are Sometimes Created Together And--and In Love Before They're Born.

We Want To Believe. Young Students Try To Believe In Older Authors, Constituents Try To Believe In Their Congressmen, Countries Try To Believe In Their Statesmen, But They Can't. Too Many Voices, Too Much Scattered, Illogical Ill-considered Criticism.

Your Life On Earth Will Be, As Always, The Interval Between Two Significant Glances In A Mundane Mirror.

How I Feel Is That If I Wanted Anything I'd Take It. That's What I've Always Thought All My Life. But It Happens That I Want You, And So I Just Haven't Room For Any Other Desires.

I Avoided Writers Very Carefully Because They Can Perpetuate Trouble As No One Else Can.

It Occurred To Me That There Was No Difference Between Men, In Intelligence Or Race, So Profound As The Difference Between The Sick And The Well.

There Is No Confusion Like The Confusion Of A Simple Mind.

He Talked A Lot About The Past And I Gathered That He Wanted To Recover Something, Some Idea Of Himself Perhaps, That Had Gone Into Loving Daisy.

Somewhere Inside Me There’ll Always Be The Person I Am To-night

Tender Is The Night

Those Days Are Over. I Have To Be Won All Over Again Every Time You See Me.

An Artist Is Someone Who Can Hold Two Opposing Viewpoints And Still Remain Fully Functional.

Good Manners Are An Admission That Everybody Is So Tender That They Have To Be Handled With Gloves. Now, Human Respect—you Don't Call A Man A Coward Or A Liar Lightly, But If You Spend Your Life Sparing People's Feelings And Feeding Their Vanity, You Get So You Can't Distinguish What Should Be Respected In Them.

Laughter Is Easier Minute By Minute, Spilled With Prodigality, Tipped Out At A Cheerful Word.

Advertising Is A Racket, Like The Movies And The Brokerage Business. You Cannot Be Honest Without Admitting That Its Constructive Contribution To Humanity Is Exactly Minus Zero.

I Care Not Who Hoes The Lettuce Of My Country If I Can Eat The Salad!

I See You're Looking At My Cuff Buttons." I Hadn't Been Looking At Them, But I Did Now.

Yet High Over The City Our Line Of Yellow Windows Must Have Contributed Their Share Of Human Secrecy To The Casual Watcher In The Darkening Streets, And I Was Him Too, Looking Up And Wondering. I Was Within And Without, Simultaneously Enchanted And Repelled By The Inexhaustible Variety Of Life.

I Like France, Where Everybody Thinks He's Napoleon--down Here Everybody Thinks He's Christ.

He Wanted People To Like His Mind Again-after Awhile It Might Be Such A Nice Place In Which To Live.

Men She Knew'? - She Had Conceded Vaguely To Herself That All Men Who Had Ever Been In Love With Her Were Her Friends.

Before You Criticize Others, Remember, They May Not Have Had The Same Opportunities In Life As You Have Had

I Never Believe Much In Happiness. I Never Believe In Misery Either. Those Are Things You See On The Stage Or The Screen Or The Printed Page, They Never Really Happen To You In Life.

Tireless Passion, Fierce Jealousy, Longing To Possess And Crush-these Alone Were Left Of All His Love For Rosalind; These Remained To Him As Payment For The Loss Of His Youth-bitter Calomel Under The Thin Sugar Of Love's Exaltation.

It Is Not Merely Enough To Have The Ability To Be Persistant, You Must Also Have The Ability To Start Over.

A Classic,' Suggested Anthony, 'is A Successful Book That Has Survived The Reaction Of The Next Period Or Generation. Then It's Safe, Like A Style In Architecture Or Furniture. It's Acquired A Picturesque Dignity To Take The Place Of Its Fashion.

He Felt Married To Her, That Was All.

In My Younger And More Vulnerable Years My Father Gave Me Some Advice That I've Been Turning Over In My Mind Ever Since.

The Rhythm Of The Weekend, With Its Birth, Its Planned Gaiety, And Its Announced End, Followed The Rhythm Of Life And Was A Substitute For It.

He Had Angered Providence By Resisting Too Many Temptations. There Was Nothing Left But Heaven, Where He Would Meet Only Those Who, Like Him, Had Wasted Earth.

He Was Handsome Then If Never Before, Bound For One Of Those Immortal Moments Which Come So Radiantly That Their Remembered Light Is Enough To See By For Years.

She Laughed With Thrilling Scorn. "sophisticated-god, I'm Sophisticated!

No One Should Live Beyond 30.

The Hangover Became A Part Of The Day As Well Allowed-for As The Spanish Siesta.

So I Walked Away And Left Him Standing There In The Moonlight - Watching Over Nothing.

I Can’t Tell You Just How Wonderful She Is. I Don’t Want You To Know. I Don’t Want Any One To Know.

To The Wingless A More Interesting Phenomenon Is Their (w/e Egg) Dissimilarity In Every Particular Except Shape And Size.

As He Took Her Hand She Saw Him Look Her Over From Head To Foot, A Gesture She Recognized And That Made Her Feel At Home, But Gave Her Always A Faint Feeling Of Superiority To Whoever Made It. If Her Person Was Property She Could Exercise Whatever Advantage Was Inherent In Its Ownership.

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