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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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Even When The East

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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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.

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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.

She Smiled, A Moving Childish Smile That Was Like All The Lost Youth In The World.

There Was No God In His Heart, He Knew; His Ideas Were Still In Riot; There Was Ever The Pain Of Memory; The Regret For His Lost Youth-yet The Waters Of Disillusion Had Left A Deposit On His Soul, Responsibility And A Love Of Life, The Faint Stirring Of Old Ambitions And Unrealized Dreams...... And He Could Not Tell Why The Struggle Was Worth While, Why He Had Determined To Use To The Utmost Himself And His Heritage From The Personalities He Had Passed... He Stretched Out His Arms To The Crystalline, Radiant Sky. I Know Myself," He Cried, "but That Is All.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It Is Not Necessarily Poverty Of Spirit That Makes A Woman Surround Herself With Life - It Can Be A Superabundance Of Interest.

Tender Is The Night

When He Buys His Ties He Has To Ask If Gin Will Make Them Run.

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.

There Was Not A Moving Up Into Vacated Places; There Was Simply An Anachronistic Staying On Between A Vanishing Past And An Incalculable Future.

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

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

So There Was Not An "i" Anymore - Not A Basis On Which I Could Organize My Self-respect - Save My Limitless Capacity For Toil That It Seemed I Possessed No More.

I Want To Give A Really Bad Party. I Mean It. I Want To Give A Party Where There’s A Brawl And Seductions And People Going Home With Their Feelings Hurt And Women Passed Out In The Cabinet De Toilette. You Wait And See.

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

Hard To Sit Here And Be Close To You, And Not Kiss You.

Tender Is The Night

The Idea That To Make A Man Work You've Got To Hold Gold In Front Of His Eyes Is A Growth, Not An Axiom. We've Done That For So Long That We've Forgotten There's Any Other Way.

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

I Noticed That She Wore Her Evening Dress, All Her Dresses, Like Sports Clothes-there Was A Jauntiness About Her Movements As If She Had First Learned To Walk Upon A Golf Course On Clean, Crisp, Mornings.

I May Turn Out An Intellectual, But I'll Never Write Anything But Mediocre Poetry.

Well, You Never Knew Exactly How Much Space You Occupied In People's Lives.

Tender Is The Night

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.

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

Intelligence Is Measured By A Person's Ability To See Validity Within Both Sides Of Contradicting Arguments.

What'll We Do With Ourselves This Afternoon,' Cried Daisy, 'and The Day After That, And The Next Thirty Years?' 'don't Be Morbid,' Jordan Said. 'life Starts All Over Again When It Gets Crisp In The Fall.' 'but It's So Hot,' Insisted Daisy, On The Verge Of Tears, 'and Everything's So Confused. Let's All Go To Town!

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.

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.

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

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

For Years Afterwards When Amory Thought Of Eleanor He Seemed Still To Hear The Wind Sobbing Around Him And Sending Little Chills Into The Places Beside His Heart. The Night When They Rode Up The Slope And Watched The Cold Moon Float Through The Clouds, He Lost A Further Part Of Him That Nothing Could Restore; And When He Lost It He Lost Also The Power Of Regretting It.

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.

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

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.

Good Manners Are An Admission That Everybody Is So Tender That They Have To Be Handle With Gloves.

Tender Is The Night

We Must Leave This Terrifying Place To-morrow And Go Searching For Sunshine.

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

Aristocracy's Only An Admission That Certain Traits Which We Call Fine - Courage And Honor And Beauty And All That Sort Of Thing - Can Best Be Developed In A Favorable Environment, Where You Don't Have The Warpings Of Ignorance And Necessity.

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

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.

Smoking Had Come To Be An Important Punctuation Mark In The Long Sentence Of A Day On The Road.

Punctuation Marks

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

Then There Came A Faraway, Booming Voice Like A Low, Clear Bell. It Came From The Center Of The Bowl And Down The Great Sides To The Ground And Then Bounced Toward Her Eagerly. 'you See I Am Fate,' It Shouted, 'and Stronger Than Your Puny Plans; And I Am How-things-turn-out And I Am Different From Your Little Dreams, And I Am The Flight Of Time And The End Of Beauty And Unfulfilled Desire; All The Accidents And Imperceptions And The Little Minutes That Shape The Crucial Hours Are Mine. I Am The Exception That Proves No Rules, The Limits Of Your Control, The Condiment In The Dish Of Life.

Exploration Was For Those With A Measure Of Peasant Blood, Those With Big Thighs And Thick Ankles Who Could Take Punishment As They Took Bread And Salt, On Every Inch Of Flesh And Spirit.

He Had Seen Me Several Times, And Had Intended To Call On Me Long Before, But A Peculiar Combination Of Circumstances Had Prevented It.

Everywhere We Go And Move On And Change, Something's Lost--something's Left Behind. You Can't Ever Quite Repeat Anything, And I've Been So Yours, Here--

Action Is Character.

It Was As If For The Remainder Of His Life He Was Condemned To Carry With Him The Egos Of Certain People, Early Met And Early Loved, And To Be Only As Complete As They Were Complete Themselves. There Was Some Element Of Loneliness Involved--so Easy To Be Loved--so Hard To Love.

The History Of My Life Is The History Of The Struggle Between An Overwhelming Urge To Write And A Combination Of Circumstances Bent On Keeping Me From It.

Overwhelming Urge

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

You Really Ought To Read More Books - You Know, Those Things That Look Like Blocks But Come Apart On One Side.

I Am Slow-thinking And Full Of Interior Rules That Act As Brakes On My Desires.

Great Gatsby Love

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.

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

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

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

I'll Never Be A Poet,' Said Amory As He Finished. 'i'm Not Enough Of A Sensualist Really; There Are Only A Few Obvious Things That I Notice As Primarily Beautiful: Women, Spring Evenings, Music At Night, The Sea; I Don't Catch The Subtle Things Like 'silver-snarling Trumpets.' I May Turn Out An Intellectual, But I'll Never Right Anything But Mediocre Poetry.

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

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.

The Victor Belongs To The Spoils.

Genius Is The Ability To Put Into Effect What Is On Your Mind.

People Invariably Chose Inimitable People To Imitate.

Murder Your Darlings.

You Can’t Repeat The Past.” “can’t Repeat The Past?” He Cried Incredulously. “why Of Course You Can!

Great Gatsby Love

Great Gatsby American Dream

I Was Enjoying Myself Now. I Had Taken Two Finger Bowls Of Champagne And The Scene Had Changed Before My Eyes Into Something Significant, Elemental And Profound.

Thirty--the Promise Of A Decade Of Loneliness, A Thinning List Of Single Men To Know, A Thinning Brief-case Of Enthusiasm, Thinning Hair.

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.

Beautiful Things Grow To A Certain Height And Then They Fail And Fade Off, Breathing Out Memories As They Decay. And Just As Any Period Decays In Our Minds, The Things Of That Period Should Decay Too, And In That Way They're Preserved For A While In The Few Hearts Like Mine That React To Them. Trying To Preserve A Century By Keeping Its Relics Up To Date Is Like Keeping A Dying Man Alive By Stimulants.

Sometimes I Wish I'd Been An Englishman; American Life Is So Damned Dumb And Stupid And Healthy

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

You're A Rotten Driver,' I Protested. 'either You Ought To Be More Careful Or You Oughtn't To Drive At All.' 'i Am Careful.' 'no, You're Not.' 'well, Other People Are,' She Said Lightly. 'what's That Got To Do With It?' 'they'll Keep Out Of My Way,' She Insisted. 'it Takes Two To Make An Accident.' 'suppose You Met Somebody Just As Careless As Yourself.' 'i Hope I Never Will,' She Answered. 'i Hate Careless People. That's Why I Like You.' Her Grey, Sun-strained Eyes Stared Straight Ahead, But She Had Deliberately Shifted Our Relations, And For A Moment I Thought I Loved Her.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Bar Is In Full Swing, And Floating Rounds Of Cocktails Permeate The Garden Outside, Until The Air Is Alivewith Chatter And Laughter, And Casual Innuendo And Introductions Forgotten On The Spot, And Enthusiastic Meetings Between Women Who Never Knew Each Other’s Names.

Nothing Is As Obnoxious As Other People's Luck.

That Voice Was A Deathless Song.

The Failure And The Success Both Believe In Their Hearts That They Have Accurately Balanced Points Of View, The Success Because He's Succeeded, And The Failure Because He's Failed. The Successful Man Tells His Son To Profit By His Father's Good Fortune, And The Failure Tells His Son To Profit By His Father's Mistakes.

A New Generation Dedicated More Than The Last To The Fear Of Poverty And The Worship Of Success; Grown Up To Find All Gods Dead, All Wars Fought, All Faiths In Man Shaken...

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

Great Gatsby Love

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

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.

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.

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.

They Had Spent A Year In France For No Particular Reason, And Then Drifted Here And There Unrestfully Wherever People Played Polo And Were Rich Together.

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

The Worst Thing In The World Is To Try To Sleep And Not To.

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.

The Officer Looked At Daisy While She Was Speaking, In A Way That Every Young Girl Wants To Be Looked At Sometime, And Because It Seemed Romantic To Me I Have Remembered The Incident Ever Since.

She Confused Him And Hindered The Flow Of His Ideas. Self-expression Had Never Seemed At Once So Desirable And So Impossible.

How Different It All Was From What You'd Planned.

One Should, For Example, Be Able To See That Things Are Hopeless And Yet Be Determined To Make Them Otherwise.

Once One Is Caught Up Into The Material World Not One Person In Ten Thousand Finds The Time To Form Literary Taste, To Examine The Validity Of Philosophic Concepts For Himself, Or To Form What, For Lack Of A Better Phrase, I Might Call The Wise And Tragic Sense Of Life.

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

It Was Strange To Have No Self-to Be Like A Little Boy Left Alone In A Big House, Who Knew That Now He Could Do Anything He Wanted To Do, But Found That There Was Nothing That He Wanted To Do.

Through All He Said, Even Through His Appalling Sentimentality, I Was Reminded Of Something-an Elusive Rhythm, A Fragment Of Lost Words, That I Heard Somewhere A Long Time Ago. For A Moment A Phrase Tried To Take Shape In My Mouth And My Lips Parted Like A Dumb Man's, As Though There Was More Struggling Upon Them Than A Wisp Of Startled Air. But They Made No Sound And What I Had Almost Remembered Was Uncommunicable Forever.

The Ability To Hold Two Competing Thoughts In One's Mind And Still Be Able To Function Is The Mark Of A Superior Mind

Intelligence Is A Mere Instrument Of Circumstances.

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.

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

They Slipped Briskly Into An Intimacy From Which They Never Recovered.

For What It's Worth, It's Never Too Late To Be Whoever You Want To Be. I Hope You Live A Life You're Proud Of And If You Find That You're Not, I Hope You Have The Strength To Start Over.

Love Is Fragile -- She Was Thinking -- But Perhaps The Pieces Are Saved, The Things That Hovered On Lips, That Might Have Been Said. The New Love-words, The Tenderness Learned, And Treasured Up For The Next Lover.

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

Never Befuddle A Solitary Thrashing With A Last Annihilation.

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.

In His Blue Gardens Men And Girls Came And Went Like Moths Among The Whisperings And The Champagne And The Stars.

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

Great Gatsby American Dream

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

I’ve Heard It Said That Daisy’s Murmur Was Only To Make People Lean Toward Her; An Irrelevant Criticism That Made It No Less Charming.

Character Is Plot, Plot Is Character.

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.

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.

She Was Incurably Dishonest.

We All Have Souls Of Different Ages

"i Was Counting The Waves", Replied Amory Gravely, "i'm Going In For Statistics".

Then I Grew Up, And The Beauty Of Succulent Illusions Fell Away From Me.

The Kiss Originated When The First Male Reptile Licked The First Female Reptile, Implying In A Subtle Way That She Was As Succulent As The Small Reptile He Had For Dinner The Night Before.

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.

It Was Only A Sunny Smile, And Little It Cost In The Giving, But Like Morning Light It Scattered The Night And Made The Day Worth Living.

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.

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

Nancy Had A Mouth Like A Remembered Kiss.

At Fifteen You Had The Radiance Of Early Morning, At Twenty You Will Begin To Have The Melancholy Brilliance Of The Moon.

He's Sensitive And I Don't Want Him To Break His Heart Over Somebody Who Doesn't Care About Him.

A Sense Of The Fundamental Decencies Is Parceled Out Unequally At Birth.

Great Gatsby Important

Most Affectations Conceal Something Eventually, Even Though They Don't In The Beginning.

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.

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

Sense Of Responsibility

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

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.

Progress Was A Labyrinth ... People Plunging Blindly In And Then Rushing Wildly Back, Shouting That They Had Found It ... The Invisible King-the élan Vital-the Principle Of Evolution ... Writing A Book, Starting A War, Founding A School.

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.

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.

Happiness Is The Relief After Extreme Tension

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.

Often People Display A Curious Respect For A Man Drunk, Rather Like The Respect Of Simple Races For The Insane... There Is Something Awe-inspiring In One Who Has Lost All Inhibitions.

At The Enchanted Metropolitan Twilight I Felt A Haunting Loneliness Sometimes, And Felt It In Others -- Poor Young Clerks Who Loitered In Front Of Windows Waiting Until It Was Time For A Solitary Restaurant Dinner -- Young Clerks In The Dusk, Wasting The Most Poignant Moments Of Night And Life.

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.

That Was Always My Experience-a Poor Boy In A Rich Town; A Poor Boy In A Rich Boy's School; A Poor Boy In A Rich Man's Club At Princeton .... However, I Have Never Been Able To Forgive The Rich For Being Rich, And It Has Colored My Entire Life And Works.

No Such Thing As A Man Willing To Be Honest - That Would Be Like A Blind Man Willing To See.

A Squalid Phantasmagoria Of Breath

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.

I Want Leisure To Read—an Immense Amount.

I Was Perhaps An Egotist In Youth, But I Soon Found It Made Me Morbid To Think Too Much About Myself

If Personality Is An Unbroken Series Of Successful Gestures, Then There Was Something Gorgeous About Him, Some Heightened Sensitivity To The Promises Of Life, As If He Were Related To One Of Those Intricate Machines That Registered Earthquakes Ten Thousand Miles Away.

There's A Right Way Of Doing Things And A Wrong Way. If You've Made Up Your Mind To Be Different From Everybody Else, I Don't Suppose I Can Stop You, But I Really Don't Think It's Very Considerate.

If You Are Strong Enough, There Are No Precedents.

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.

You'll Find Another.' God! Banish The Thought. Why Don't You Tell Me That 'if The Girl Had Been Worth Having She'd Have Waited For You'? No, Sir, The Girl Really Worth Having Won't Wait For Anybody.

Selfish People Are In A Way Terribly Capable Of Great Loves.

There's No Beauty Without Poignancy And There's No Poignancy Without The Feeling That It's Going, Men, Names, Books, Houses--bound For Dust--mortal--

Optimism Is The Content Of Small Men In High Places.

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.

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.

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.

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

Nobody Ever Became A Writer Just By Wanting To Be One.

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.

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

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.

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

Show Me A Hero And I'll Write You A Tragedy.

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

He Had Waited Five Years And Bought A Mansion Where He Dispensed Starlight To Casual Moths - So That He Could 'come Over' Some Afternoon To A Stranger's Garden.

He Knew That When He Kissed This Girl, And Forever Wed His Unutterable Visions To Her Perishable Breath, His Mind Would Never Romp Again Like The Mind Of God.

America Is A Willingness Of The Heart.

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

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

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.

Don't Let Yourself Feel Worthless: Often Through Life You Will Really Be At Your Worst When You Seem To Think Best Of Yourself; And Don't Worry About Losing Your "personality," As You Persist In Calling It: At Fifteen You Had The Radiance Of Early Morning, At Twenty You Will Begin To Have The Melancholy Brilliance Of The Moon, And When You Are My Age You Will Give Out, As I Do, The Genial Golden Warmth Of 4 P.m.

Then, As Though It Had Been Waiting On A Near By Roof For Their Arrival, The Moon Came Slanting Suddenly Through The Vines And Turned The Girl's Face The Color Of White Roses.

Personality Is An Unbroken Series Of Successful Gestures.

He Felt Married To Her, That Was All.

Now He Realized The Truth: That Sacrifice Was No Purchase Of Freedom. It Was Like A Great Elective Office, It Was Like An Inheritance Of Power - To Certain People At Certain Times An Essential Luxury, Carrying With It Not A Guarantee But A Responsibility, Not A Security But An Infinite Risk. Its Very Momentum Might Drag Him Down To Ruin - The Passing Of The Emotional Wave That Made It Possible Might Leave The One Who Made It High And Dry Forever On An Island Of Despair...sacrifice By Its Very Nature Was Arrogant And Impersonal; Sacrifice Should Be Eternally Supercilious.

I've Been Drunk For About A Week Now, And I Thought It Might Sober Me Up To Sit In A Library.

I Must Hold In Balance The Sense Of The Futility Of Effort And The Sense Of The Necessity To Struggle; The Conviction Of The Inevitability Of Failure And Still The Determination To 'succeed'-and, More Than These, The Contradiction Between The Dead Hand Of The Past And The High Intentions Of The Future. If I Could Do This Through The Common Ills-domestic, Professional And Personal-then The Ego Would Continue As An Arrow Shot From Nothingness To Nothingness With Such Force That Only Gravity Would Bring It To Earth At Last.

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.

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.

He Found What A Grotesque Thing A Rose Is And How Raw The Sunlight Was Upon The Scarcely Created Grass.

Great Gatsby American Dream

So He Waited, Listening For A Moment Longer To The Tuning-fork That Had Been Struck Upon A Star.

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.

Rosemary Bubbled With Delight At The Trunks. Her Naivete Responded Whole-heartedly To The Expensive Simplicity Of The Divers, Unaware Of Its Complexity And Its Lack Of Innocence, Unaware That It Was All A Selection Of Quality Rather Than Quantity From The Run Of The World's Bazaar; And That The Simplicity Of Behavior Also, The Nursery-like Peace And Good Will, The Emphasis On The Simpler Virtues, Was Part Of A Desperate Bargain With The Gods And Had Been Attained Through Struggles She Could Not Have Guessed At.

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.

You've Got An Awfully Kissable Mouth.

Your First Most Typical Figure In Any New Place Turns Out To Be A Bluff Or A Local Nuisance.

A Writer Wastes Nothing.

The Best Of America Drifts To Paris. The American In Paris Is The Best American. It Is More Fun For An Intelligent Person To Live In An Intelligent Country. France Has The Only Two Things Toward Which We Drift As We Grow Older—intelligence And Good Manners.

Life Is Much More Successfully Looked At From A Single Window.

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.

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

Life Is So Damned Hard, So Damned Hard... It Just Hurts People And Hurts People, Until Finally It Hurts Them So That They Can't Be Hurt Ever Any More. That's The Last And Worst Thing It Does.

The Truth Was That For Some Months He Had Been Going Through That Partitioning Of The Things Of Youth Wherein It Is Decided Whether Or Not To Die For What One No Longer Believes.

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.

I Don’t Want Just Words. If That’s All You Have For Me, You’d Better Go

Daisy Began To Sing With The Music In A Husky, Rhythmic Whisper, Bringing Out A Meaning In Each Word That It Had Never Had Before And Would Never Have Again. When The Melody Rose, Her Voice Broke Up Sweetly, Following It, In A Way Contralto Voices Have, And Each Change Tipped Out A Little Of Her Warm Human Magic Upon The Air.

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

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