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And So With The Sunshine And The Great Bursts Of Leaves Growing On The Trees, Just As Things Grow In Fast Movies, I Had That Familiar Conviction That Life Was Beginning Over Again With The Summer.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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And So With The

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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And So With The Sunshine And The Great Bursts Of Leaves Growing On The Trees, Just As Things Grow In Fast Movies, I Had That Familiar Conviction That Life Was Beginning Over Again With The Summer.

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Human Sympathy Has Its Limits, And We Were Contented To Let All Their Tragic Arguments Fade With The City Lights Behind.

No," Interrupted Marcia Emphatically. "and You're A Sweet Boy. Come Here And Kiss Me." Horace Stopped Quickly In Front Of Her. "why Do You Want Me To Kiss You?" He Asked Intently. "do You Just Go Round Kissing People?" "why, Yes," Admitted Marcia, Unruffled. "'at's All Life Is. Just Going Around Kissing People.

He Was Resentful Against All Those In Authority Over Him, And This, Combined With A Lazy Indifference Toward His Work, Exasperated Every Master In School. He Grew Discouraged And Imagined Himself A Pariah; Took To Sulking In Corners And Reading After Lights. With A Dread Of Being Alone He Attached A Few Friends, But Since They Were Not Among The Elite Of The School, He Used Them Simply As Mirrors Of Himself, Audiences Before Which He Might Do That Posing Absolutely Essential To Him. He Was Unbearably Lonely, Desperately Unhappy.

She’s Got An Indiscreet Voice,” I Remarked. “it’s Full Of-“ I Hesitated. “her Voice Is Full Of Money,” He Said Suddenly. That Was It. I’d Never Understood Before. It Was Full Of Money-that Was The Inexhaustible Charm That Rose And Fell In It, The Jingle Of It, The Cymbals’ Song Of It.

When Eleanor's Arm Touched His He Felt His Hands Grow Cold With Deadly Fear Lest He Should Lose The Shadow Brush With Which His Imagination Was Painting Wonders Of Her. He Watched Her From The Corners Of His Eyes As Ever He Did When He Walked With Her-- She Was A Feast And A Folly And He Wished It Had Been His Destiny To Sit Forever On A Haystack And See Life Through Her Green Eyes.

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

Switzerland Is A Country Where Very Few Things Begin, But Many Things End.

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.

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.

You Seem To Take Things So Personally, Hating People And Worshipping Them--always Thinking People Are So Important--especially Yourselves. You Just Ask To Be Kicked Around. I Like People And I Like Them To Like Me, But I Wear My Heart Where God Put It--on The Inside.

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!

His Was A Great Sin Who First Invented Consciousness. Let Us Lose It For A Few Hours.

What Do You Think Of That? It’s Stopped Raining." I’m Glad Jay." Her Throat, Full Of Aching, Grieving Beauty, Told Only Of Her Unexpected Joy.

Suddenly She Realized That What She Was Regretting Was Not The Lost Past But The Lost Future, Not What Had Not Been But What Would Never Be.

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.

Writers Aren’t People Exactly. Or, If They’re Any Good, They’re A Whole Lot Of People Trying So Hard To Be One Person.

Things Are Sweeter When They're Lost. I Know--because Once I Wanted Something And Got It. It Was The Only Thing I Ever Wanted Badly, Dot, And When I Got It It Turned To Dust In My Hand.

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

Personality Is An Unbroken Series Of Successful Gestures.

If You Are Strong Enough, There Are No Precedents.

Who Would Not Be Pleased At Carrying Lamps Helpfully Through The Darkness?

That Is Part Of The Beauty Of All Literature. You Discover That Your Longings Are Universal Longings, That You're Not Lonely And Isolated From Anyone. You Belong.

I Don't Much Care Where I Am Anymore, Nor Expect Very Much From Places.

I Hope She'll Be A Fool -- That's The Best Thing A Girl Can Be In This World, A Beautiful Little Fool.

He Had No Plans, No Definite Intentions, Except To Kiss Her Lips Again, To Hold Her In His Arms.

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.

The Men--the Undergraduates Of Yale And Princeton Are Cleaner, Healthier, Better-looking, Better Dressed, Wealthier And More Attractive Than Any Undergraduate Body In The Country.

I'm A Romantic; A Sentimental Person Thinks Things Will Last, A Romantic Person Hopes Against Hope That They Won't.

A New World, Material Without Being Real, Where Poor Ghosts, Breathing Dreams Like Air, Drifted Fortuitously About.

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

They Were Still In The Happier Stages Of Love. They Were Full Of Brave Illusions About Each Other, Tremendous Illusions, So That The Communion Of Self With Self Seemed To Be On A Plane Where No Other Human Relations Mattered.

Looking Back Over A Decade One Sees The Ideal Of A University Become A Myth, A Vision, A Meadow Lark Among The Smoke Stacks. Yet Perhaps It Is There At Princeton, Only More Elusive Than Under The Skies Of The Prussian Rhineland Or Oxfordshire; Or Perhaps Some Men Come Upon It Suddenly And Possess It, While Others Wander Forever Outside. Even These Seek In Vain Through Middle Age For Any Corner Of The Republic That Preserves So Much Of What Is Fair, Gracious, Charming And Honorable In American Life.

I've Got An Adjective That Just Fits You.

When The First-rate Author Wants An Exquisite Heroine Or A Lovely Morning, He Finds That All The Superlatives Have Been Worn Shoddy By His Inferiors. It Should Be A Rule That Bad Writers Must Start With Plain Heroines And Ordinary Mornings, And, If They Are Able, Work Up To Something Better.

There Was One Of His Lonelinesses Coming, One Of Those Times When He Walked The Streets Or Sat, Aimless And Depressed, Biting A Pencil At His Desk. It Was A Self-absorption With No Comfort, A Demand For Expression With No Outlet, A Sense Of Time Rushing By, Ceaselessly And Wastefully - Assuaged Only By That Conviction That There Was Nothing To Waste, Because All Efforts And Attainments Were Equally Valueless.

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've Noticed That The Children Of Other Nations Always Seem Precocious. That's Because The Strange Manners Of Their Elders Have Caught Our Attention Most And The Children Echo Those Manners Enough To Seem Like Their Parents.

They Always Believe That 'things Are In A Bad Way Now,' But They 'haven't Any Faith In These Idealists.' One Minute They Call Wilson 'just A Dreamer, Not Practical'- A Year Later They Rail At Him For Making His Dreams Realities. They Haven't Clear Logical Ideas On One Single Subject Except A Sturdy, Stolid Opposition To All Change. They Don't Think Uneducated People Should Be Highly Paid, But They Won't See That If They Don't Pay The Uneducated People Their Children Are Going To Be Uneducated Too, And We're Going Round And Round In A Circle. That- Is The Great Middle Class.

Conditions In The [movie] Industry Somehow Propose The Paradox: "we Brought You Here For Your Individuality But While You're Here We Insist That You Do Everything To Conceal It.

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

There Was Never A Good Biography Of A Good Novelist. There Couldn't Be. He Is Too Many People If He's Any Good.

You Are The Finest, Loveliest, Tenderest, And Most Beautiful Person I Have Ever Known—and Even That Is An Understatement.

They Were Stars On This Stage, Each Playing To An Audience Of Two: The Passion Of Their Pretense Created The Actuality. Here, Finally, Was The Quintessence Of Self-expression-- Yet It Was Probable That For The Most Part Their Love Expressed Gloria Rather Than Anthony. He Felt Often Like A Scarecly Tolerated Guest At A Party She Was Giving.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

It's All Life Is. Just Going 'round Kissing People.

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.

Never Confuse A Single Defeat With A Final Defeat.

To Create Souls In Men, To Create Fine Happiness And Fine Despair She Must Remain Deeply Proud - Proud To Be Inviolate, Proud Also To Be Melting, To Be Passionate And Possessed.

When The Lightning Strikes One Of Us, It Strikes Both

Travel, Which Had Once Charmed Him, Seemed, At Length, Unendurable, A Business Of Color Without Substance, A Phantom Chase After His Own Dream's Shadow.

In A Real Dark Night Of The Soul, It Is Always Three O'clock In The Morning, Day After Day.

Their Lips Brushed Like Young Wild Flowers In The Wind.

I Am Too Much A Moralist At Heart, And Really Want To Preach At People In Some Acceptable Form, Rather Than Entertain Them.

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

There Was Even A Recurrent Idea In America About An Education That Would Leave Out History And The Past, That Should Be A Sort Of Equipment For Aerial Adventure, Weighed Down By None Of The Stowaways Of Inheritance Or Tradition.

She Was Beautiful - But Especially She Was Without Mercy.

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

New Friends Can Often Have A Better Time Together Than Old Friends.

Was It The Infinite Sadness Of Her Eyes That Drew Him Or The Mirror Of Himself That He Found In The Gorgeous Clarity Of Her Mind?

So He Tasted The Deep Pain That Is Reserved Only For The Strong, Just As He Had Tasted For A Little While The Deep Happiness.

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

Great Gatsby American Dream

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

All Things Come To Him Who Mates.

Even When The East Excited Me Most, Even When I Was Keenly Aware Of Its Superiority To The Broad, Sprawling, Swollen Towns Beyond The Ohio, With Their Interminable Inquisitions Which Only Spared Children And The Very Old-even Then It Had Always For Me A Quality Of Distortion.

She Wanted To Crawl Into His Pocket And Be Safe Forever.

Modern Life... Changes No Longer Century By Century, But Year By Year, Ten Times Faster Than It Ever Has Before-populations Doubling, Civilizations Unified More Closely With Other Civilizations, Economic Interdependence, Racial Questions, And-we're Dawdling Along. My Idea Is That We've Got To Go Very Much Faster.

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

First You Take A Drink, Then The Drink Takes A Drink, Then The Drink Takes You.

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.

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.

Many Nights He Lay There Dreaming Awake Of Secret Cafés In Mont Marte, Where Ivory Women Delved In Romantic Mysteries With Diplomats And Soldiers Of Fortune, While Orchestras Played Hungarian Waltzes And The Air Was Thick And Exotic With Intrigue And Moonlight And Adventure.

Why Shouldn't He? All Life Is Just A Progression Toward And Then A Recession From One Phrase-- 'i Love You

They Were Smiling At Each Other As If This Was The Beginning Of The World.

The Cleverly Expressed Opposite Of Any Generally Accepted Idea Is Worth A Fortune To Somebody.

The First Lights Of The Evening Were Springing Into Pale Existence. The Ferris Wheel, Pricked Out Now In Lights, Revolved Leisurely Through The Dusk; A Few Empty Cars Of The Roller Coaster Rattled Overhead.

Vitality Shows In Not Only The Ability To Persist But The Ability To Start Over.

The Test Of A First-rate Intelligence Is The Ability To Hold Two Opposed Ideas In Mind At The Same Time And Still Retain The Ability To Function.

Positive Thinking

Then Wear The Gold Hat, If That Will Move Her; If You Can Bounce High, Bounce For Her Too, Till She Cry "lover, Gold-hatted, High-bouncing Lover, I Must Have You!

It Takes Two To Make An Accident.

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.

From The Ruins, Lonely And Inexplicable As The Sphinx, Rose The Empire State Building.

Though The Jazz Age Continued It Became Less And Less An Affair Of Youth. The Sequel Was Like A Children's Party Taken Over By The Elders.

Don't Say 'wife.' I'm Your Mistress. Wife's Such An Ugly Word. Your 'permanent Mistress' Is So Much More Tangible And Desirable… .

I Don't Think He Was Ever Happy Unless Someone Was In Love With Him, Responding To Him Like Filings To A Magnet, Helping Him To Explain Himself, Promising Him Something. What It Was I Do Not Know. Perhaps They Promised That There Would Always Be Women In The World Who Would Spend Their Brightest, Freshest, Rarest Hours To Nurse And Protect That Superiority He Cherished In His Heart.

The Intimate Revelations Of Young Men, Or At Least The Terms In Which They Express Them, Are Usually Plagiaristic And Marred By Obvious Suppressions.

I Simply State That I'm A Product Of A Versatile Mind In A Restless Generation - With Every Reason To Throw My Mind And Pen In With The Radicals. Even If, Deep In My Heart, I Thought We Were All Blind Atoms In A World As Limited As A Stroke Of A Pendulum, I And My Sort Would Struggle Against Tradition; Try, At Least, To Displace Old Cants With New Ones. I've Thought I Was Right About Life At Various Times, But Faith Is Difficult. One Thing I Know. If Living Isn't Seeking For The Grail It May Be A Damned Amusing Game.

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

The Water Reached Up For Her, Pulled Her Down Tenderly Out Of The Heat, Seeped In Her Hair And Ran Into The Corners Of Her Body. She Turned Round And Round In It, Embracing It, Wallowing In It.

All She Wanted Was To Be A Little Girl, To Be Efficiently Taken Care Of By Some Yielding Yet Superior Power, Stupider And Steadier Than Herself. It Seemed That The Only Lover She Had Ever Wanted Was A Lover In A Dream

There Used To Be Two Kinds Of Kisses: First When Girls Were Kissed And Deserted; Second, When They Were Engaged. Now There's A Third Kind, Where The Man Is Kissed And Deserted. If Mr. Jones Of The Nineties Bragged He'd Kissed A Girl, Everyone Knew He Was Through With Her. If Mr. Jones Of 1919 Brags The Same, Everyone Knows It's Because He Can't Kiss Her Any More. Given A Decent Start Any Girl Can Beat A Man Nowadays.

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

I Want To Die Violently Instead Of Fading Out Sentimentally.

The Faces Of Most American Women Over Thirty Are Relief Maps Of Petulant And Bewildered Unhappiness.

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

I'm One Of Those People Who Go Through The World Giving Other People Thrills, But Getting Few Myself Except Those I Read Into Men On Such Nights As These. I Have The Social Courage To Go On The Stage, But Not The Energy; I Haven't The Patience To Write Books; And I Never Met A Man I'd Marry. However, I'm Only Eighteen.

A Great Social Success Is A Pretty Girl Who Plays Her Cards As Carefully As If She Were Plain.

So They Were Desperately In Love And Being Desperately In Love Involves A Desperate Existence.

But With Every Word She Was Drawing Further And Further Into Herself, So He Gave That Up, And Only The Dead Dream Fought On As The Afternoon Slipped Away, Trying To Touch What Was No Longer Tangible, Struggling Unhappily, Undespairingly, Toward That Lost Voice Across The Room.

Forgotten Is Forgiven.

A Man's Social Rank Is Determined By The Amount Of Bread He Eats In A Sandwich.

It Is In The Twenties That The Actual Momentum Of Life Begins To Slacken, And It Is A Simple Soul Indeed To Whom As Many Things Are As Significant And Meaningful At Thirty As At Ten Years Before. At Thirty An Organ-grinder Is A More Or Less A Moth Eaten Man Who Grinds An Organ - And Once He Was An Organ-grinder! The Unmistakable Stigma Of Humanity Touches All Those Impersonal And Beautiful Things That Only Youth Ever Grasps In Their Impersonal Glory.

I Wanted No More Riotous Excursions With Privileged Glimpses Into The Human Heart.

Great Gatsby Nick

Work Like Hell! I Had 122 Rejection Slips Before I Sold A Story.

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.

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.

When We Pulled Out Into The Winter Night And The Real Snow, Our Snow, Began To Stretch Out Beside Us And Twinkle Against The Windows, And The Dim Lights Of Small Wisconsin Stations Moved By, A Sharp Wild Brace Came Suddenly Into The Air. That's My Middle-west - Not The Wheat Or The Prairies Or The Lost Swede Towns, But The Thrilling Returning Trains Of My Youth And The Street Lamps And Sleigh Bells In The Frosty Dark And The Shadows Of Holly Wreaths Thrown By Lighted Windows On The Snow.

He Smiled Understandingly-much More Than Understandingly. It Was One Of Those Rare Smiles With A Quality Of Eternal Reassurance In It, That You May Come Across Four Or Five Times In Life. It Faced--or Seemed To Face--the Whole Eternal World For An Instant, And Then Concentrated On You With An Irresistible Prejudice In Your Favor. It Understood You Just As Far As You Wanted To Be Understood, Believed In You As You Would Like To Believe In Yourself, And Assured You That It Had Precisely The Impression Of You That, At Your Best, You Hoped To Convey.

Books Are Like Brothers. I Am An Only Child. Gatsby [is] My Imaginary Eldest Brother.

A Writer Like Me Must Have An Utter Confidence, An Utter Faith In His Star. It's An Almost Mystical Feeling, A Feeling Of Nothing-can-happen-to Me, Nothing-can-touch-me.... I Once Had It. But Through A Series Of Blows, Many Of Them My Own Fault, Something Happened To That Sense Of Immunity And I Lost My Grip.

Learn Young About Hard Work And Manners - And You'll Be Through The Whole Dirty Mess And Nicely Dead Again Before You Know It.

I Carry The Place Around The World In My Heart But Sometimes I Try To Shake It Off In My Dreams

Working-girls, In Pairs And Groups And Swarms, Loitered By These Windows, Choosing Their Future Boudoirs From Some Resplendent Display Which Included Even A Man's Silk Pajamas Laid Domestically Across The Bed. They Stood In Front Of The Jewelry Stores And Picked Out Their Engagement Rings, And Their Wedding Rings And Their Platinum Wrist Watches, And Then Drifted On To Inspect The Feather Fans And Opera Cloaks; Meanwhile Digesting The Sandwiches And Sundaes They Had Eaten For Lunch.

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.

Baltimore Is Warm But Pleasant... I Belong Here, Where Everything Is Civilized And Gay And Rotted And Polite.

You Know, You’re A Little Complicated After All.” “oh No,” She Assured Him Hastily. “no, I’m Not Really - I’m Just A - I’m Just A Whole Lot Of Different Simple People.

A Sense Of Responsibility Would Spoil Her. She's Too Pretty.

Sense Of Responsibility

The Only Way To Increase It Is To Cultivate Your Own Garden. And The Only Thing That Will Help You Is Poetry, Which Is The Most Concentrated Form Of Style.... I Don't Care How Clever The Other Professor Is, One Can't Raise A Discussion Of Modern Prose To Anything Above Tea-table Level.

...their Eyes Are Full Of Kindness As Each Feels The Full Effect Of Novelty After A Short Separation. They Are Drawing A Relaxation From Each Other's Presence, A New Serenity.

Her Philosophy Is Carpe Diem For Herself And Laissez Faire For Others.

Laissez Faire Capitalism

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

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

I Was Too Absorbed To Be Responsive

Very Strong Personalities Must Confine Themselves In Mutual Conversation To Very Gentle Subjects.

Beautiful Things Grow To A Certain Height And Then They Fail And Fade Off, Breathing Out Memories As They Decay.

When You're Older You'll Know What People Who Love Suffer. The Agony. It's Better To Be Cold And Young Than To Love. It's Happened To Me Before But Never Like This - So Accidental - Just When Everything Was Going Well.

A Big Man Has No Time Really To Do Anything But Just Sit And Be Big.

An Unread Book Is Just A Block Of Paper.

They Were Still In The Happier Stage Of Love. They Were Full Of Brave Illusions About Each Other, Tremendous Illusions, So That The Communion Of Self With Self Seemed To Be On A Plane Where No Other Human Relations Mattered. They Both Seemed To Have Arrived There With An Extraordinary Innocence As Though A Series Of Pure Accidents Had Driven Them Together, So Many Accidents That At Last They Were Forced To Conclude That They Were For Each Other. They Had Arrived With Clean Hands, Or So It Seemed, After No Traffic With The Merely Curious And Clandestine.

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.

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

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

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

If That Was True He Must Have Felt That He Had Lost The Old Warm World, Paid A High Price For Living Too Long With A Single Dream.

Her Voice Is Full Of Money.

Beauty And Love Pass, I Know... Oh, There's Sadness, Too. I Suppose All Great Happiness Is A Little Sad. Beauty Means The Scent Of Roses And Then The Death Of Roses-

Beauty And Love

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

France Was A Land, England Was A People, But America, Having About It Still That Quality Of The Idea, Was Harder To Utter - It Was The Graves At Shiloh And The Tired, Drawn, Nervous Faces Of Its Great Men, And The Country Boys Dying In The Argonne For A Phrase That Was Empty Before Their Bodies Withered. It Was A Willingness Of The Heart.

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.

It’s A Great Advantage Not To Drink Among Hard Drinking People.

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.

No Grand Idea Was Ever Born In A Conference, But A Lot Of Foolish Ideas Have Died There.

There’s A Writer For You,” He Said. “knows Everything And At The Same Time He Knows Nothing.” [narrator]it Was My First Inkling That He Was A Writer. And While I Like Writers—because If You Ask A Writer Anything You Usually Get An Answer—still It Belittled Him In My Eyes. Writers Aren’t People Exactly. Or, If They’re Any Good, They’re A Whole Lot Of People Trying So Hard To Be One Person. It’s Like Actors, Who Try So Pathetically Not To Look In Mirrors. Who Lean Backward Trying—only To See Their Faces In The Reflecting Chandeliers.

I Began To Like New York, The Racy, Adventurous Feel Of It At Night, And The Satisfaction That The Constant Flicker Of Men And Women And Machines Gives To The Restless Eye.

"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.

Stahr's Eyes And Kathleen's Met And Tangled. For An Instant They Made Love As No One Ever Dares To Do After. Their Glance Was Slower Than An Embrace, More Urgent Than A Call.

The Two Basic Stories Of All Times Are Cinderella And Jack The Giant Killer-the Charm Of Women And The Courage Of Men.

Every One Suspects Himself Of At Least One Of The Cardinal Virtues.

Great Gatsby Book

She Was Overstrained With Grief And Loneliness: Almost Any Shoulder Would Have Done As Well.

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

Great Art Is The Contempt Of A Great Man For Small Art.

He Wanted To Care, And He Could Not Care. For He Had Gone Away And He Could Never Go Back Anymore. The Gates Were Closed, The Sun Was Down, And There Was No Beauty Left But The Gray Beauty Of Steel That Withstands All Time. Even The Grief He Could Have Borne Was Left Behind In The Country Of Youth, Of Illusion, Of The Richness Of Life, Where His Winter Dreams Had Flourished.

Let Me Tell You About The Very Rich. They Are Different From You And Me. They Possess And Enjoy Early, And It Does Something To Them, Makes Them Soft Where We Are Hard, And Cynical Where We Are Trustful, In A Way That, Unless You Were Born Rich, It Is Very Difficult To Understand. They Think, Deep In Their Hearts, That They Are Better Than We Are Because We Had To Discover The Compensations And Refuges Of Life For Ourselves. Even When They Enter Deep Into Our World Or Sink Below Us, They Still Think That They Are Better Than We Are. They Are Different.

Baseball Is A Game Played By Idiots For Morons.

I Want Leisure To Read—an Immense Amount.

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 His Heart Was In A Constant, Turbulent Riot.

Her Body Calculated To A Millimeter To Suggest A Bud Yet Guarantee A Flower.

The Invitation To Miss Myra St. Claire's Bobbing Party Spent The Morning In His Coat Pocket, Where It Had An Intense Physical Affair With A Dusty Piece Of Peanut Brittle.

Men Don’t Often Know Those Times When A Girl Could Be Had For Nothing.

I Learned A Little Of Beauty - Enough To Know That It Had Nothing To Do With Truth - And I Found, Moreover, That There Was No Great Literary Tradition; There Was Only The Tradition Of The Eventful Death Of Every Literary Tradition.

Speech Is An Arrangement Of Notes That Will Never Be Played Again.

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.

Never Walk Near The Bed; To A Ghost Your Ankle Is Your Most Vulnerable Part-once In Bed, You're Safe; He May Lie Around Under The Bed All Night, But You're Safe As Daylight. If You Still Have Doubts Pull The Blanket Over Your Head.

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

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

When I See A Beautiful Shell Like That I Can't Help Feeling A Regret About What's Inside It.

The Years Between Thirty-five And Sixty-five Revolve Before The Passive Mind As One Unexplained, Confusing Merry-go-round. True, They Are A Merry-go-round Of Ill-gaited And Wind-broken Horses, Painted First In Pastel Colors, Then In Dull Grays And Browns, But Perplexing And Intolerably Dizzy The Thing Is, As Never Were The Merry-go-rounds Of Childhood Or Adolescence; As Never, Surely, Were The Certain-coursed, Dynamic Roller-coasters Of Youth. For Most Men And Women These Thirty Years Are Taken Up With A Gradual Withdrawal From Life.

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.

There Has Never Been An American Tragedy. There Have Only Been Great Failures.

I'm Restless. My Whole Generation Is Restless. I'm Sick Of A System Where The Richest Man Gets The Most Beautiful Girl If He Wants Her, Where The Artist Without An Income Has To Sell His Talents To A Button Manufacturer. Even If I Had No Talents I'd Not Be Content To Work Ten Years, Condemned Either To Celibacy Or A Furtive Indulgence, To Give Some Man's Son An Automobile.

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.

Very Well Then, Better A Sane Crook Than A Mad Puritan.

It Seemed That The Only Lover She Had Ever Wanted Was A Lover In A Dream.

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

Nicole's World Had Fallen To Pieces, But It Was Only A Flimsy And Scarcely Created World; Beneath It Her Emotions And Instincts Fought On.

We Can't Possibly Have A Summer Love. So Many People Have Tried That The Name's Become Proverbial. Summer Is Only The Unfulfilled Promise Of Spring, A Charlatan In Place Of The Warm Balmy Nights I Dream Of In April. It's A Sad Season Of Life Without Growth...it Has No Day.

But I Always Felt That I'd Rather Be Provincial Hot-tamale Than Soup Without Seasoning.

It Was Testimony To The Romantic Speculation He Inspired That There Were Whispers About Him From Those Who Had Found Little That It Was Necessary To Whisper About In This World.

You Don’t Know What A Trial It Is To Be —like Me. I've Got To Keep My Face Like Steel In The Street To Keep Men From Winking At Me.

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.

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

Great Gatsby Love

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

Later She Remembered All The Hours Of The Afternoon As Happy -- One Of Those Uneventful Times That Seem At The Moment Only A Link Between Past And Future Pleasure, But Turn Out To Have Been The Pleasure Itself.

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

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.

He Hadn’t Once Ceased Looking At Daisy, And I Think He Revalued Everything In His House According To The Measure Of Response It Drew From Her Well-loved Eyes. Sometimes, Too, He Stared Around At His Possessions In A Dazed Way, As Though In Her Actual And Astounding Presence None Of It Was Any Longer Real.

Little Montenegro! He Lifted Up The Words And Nodded At Them-with His Smile. The Smile Comprehended Montenegro’s Troubled History And Sympathized With The Brave Struggles Of The Montenegrin People. It Appreciated Fully The Chain Of National Circumstances, Which Had Elicited This Tribute From Montenegro’s Warm Little Heart. My Incredulity Was Submerged In Fascination Now; It Was Like Skimming Hastily Through A Dozen Magazines.

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.

Over The Great Bridge, With The Sunlight Through The Girders Making A Constant Flicker Upon The Moving Cars, With The City Rising Up Across The River In White Heaps And Sugar Lumps All Built With A Wish Out Of Non-olfactory Money. The City Seen From The Queensboro Bridge Is Always The City Seen For The First Time, In Its First Wild Promise Of All The Mystery And The Beauty In The World.

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.

For Awhile After You Quit Keats All Other Poetry Seems To Be Only Whistling Or Humming.

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.

He's So Dumb He Doesn't Know He's Alive.

There Was A Kindliness About Intoxication - There Was That Indescribable Gloss And Glamour It Gave, Like The Memories Of Ephemeral And Faded Evenings.

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]

Premature Success Gives One An Almost Mystical Conception Of Destiny As Opposed To Will Power-at Its Worst The Napoleonic Delusion.

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