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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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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He Smiled Understandingly-much More

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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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.

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

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

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

The Transition From Libertine To Prig Was So Complete.

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.

Sometimes It Is Harder To Deprive Oneself Of A Pain Than Of A Pleasure And The Memory So Possessed Him That For The Moment There Was Nothing To Do But To Pretend.

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.

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

Writing Is Eternal, For Therein The Dead Heart Liveth, The Clay-cold Tongue Is Eloquent, And The Quick Eye Of The Reader Is Cleared By The Reed Of The Scribe. As A Fossil In The Rock, Or A Coin In The Mortar Of A Ruin, So The Symbolled Thoughts Tell Of A Departed Soul: The Plastic Hand Hath Its Witness In A Statue, And Exactitude Of Vision In A Picture, And So, The Mind, That Was Among Us, In Its Writings Is Embalmed.

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.

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. His Life Had Been Confused And Disordered Since Then, But If He Could Once Return To A Certain Starting Place And Go Over It All Slowly, He Could Find Out What That Thing Was.

I'm A Cynical Idealist.

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.

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

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 Conscience, You Are Just One Of Many Thousand Journalists.

A Lot Of Young Girls Together Is A Romantic Secret Thing Like The First Sight Of Wild Ducks At Dawn.

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.

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

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

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

Ah," She Cried, "you Look So Cool." Their Eyes Met, And They Stared Together At Each Other, Alone In Space. With An Effort She Glanced Down At The Table. You Always Look So Cool," She Repeated. She Had Told Him That She Loved Him, And Tom Buchanan Saw.

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

If You're In Love It Ought To Make You Happy. You Ought To Laugh.

The Truth Was That Jay Gatsby, Of West Egg, Long Island, Sprang From His Platonic Conception Of Himself. He Was A Son Of God—a Phrase Which, If It Means Anything, Means Just That—and He Must Be About His Father’s Business, The Service Of A Vast, Vulgar And Meretricious Beauty.

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.

Mostly, We Authors Must Repeat Ourselves - That's The Truth. We Have Two Or Three Great And Moving Experiences In Our Lives - Experiences So Great And Moving That It Doesn't Seem At The Time Anyone Else Has Been So Caught Up And So Pounded And Dazzled And Astonished And Beaten And Broken And Rescued And Illuminated And Rewarded And Humbled In Just That Way Ever Before. Then We Learn Our Trade, Well Or Less Well, And We Tell Our Two Or Three Stories - Each Time In A New Disguise - Maybe Ten Times, Maybe A Hundred, As Long As People Will Listen.

Baseball Is A Game Played By Idiots For Morons.

I Love Her And That's The Beginning And End Of Everything.

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.

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.

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.

All Good Writing Is Swimming Under Water And Holding Your Breath.

Then Came The War, Old Sport. It Was A Great Relief, And I Tried Very Hard To Die, But I Seemed To Bear An Enchanted Life.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Experience Is The Name So Many People Give To Their Mistakes.

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

But There Was An Immediately Perceptible Vitality About Her As If The Nerves Of Her Body Were Continually Smouldering.

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.

I Am A Woman And My Business Is To Hold Things Together. My Business Is To Tear Them Apart.

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 Wanted To Appear Suddenly To Her In Novel And Heroic Colors. He Wanted To Stir Her From That Casualness She Showed Toward Everything Except Herself.

Any Person With Any Imagination Is Bound To Be Afraid.

I Hope I Haven't Given You The Impression That I Consider Kissing Intrinsically Irrational.

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

You See I Usually Find Myself Among Strangers Because I Drift Here And There Trying To Forget The Sad Things That Happened To Me.

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

New York Had All The Iridescence Of The Beginning Of The World.

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

Great Gatsby American Dream

Dear, Don't Think Of Getting Out Of Bed Yet. I've Always Suspected That Early Rising In Early Life Makes One Nervous.

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.

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 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

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.

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.

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.

My Generation Of Radicals And Breakers-down Never Found Anything To Take The Place Of The Old Virtues Of Work And Courage And The Old Graces Of Courtesy And Politeness.

And He Could Not Tell Why The Struggle Was Worthwhile, Why He Had Determined To Use 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.

For What It’s Worth, It’s Never Too Late To Be Whoever You Want To Be.

My Imagination Persisted In Sticking Horrors Into The Dark- So I Stuck My Imagination Into The Dark Instead, And Let It Look Out At Me.

A Writer Wastes Nothing.

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.

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

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.

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.

A Squalid Phantasmagoria Of Breath

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

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.

I Want To Do Everything In The World With You.

Poetry Is Either Something That Lives Like Fire Inside You

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.

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.

Nancy Had A Mouth Like A Remembered Kiss.

The Farmers May Be The Backbone Of The Country, But Who Wants To Be A Backbone?

If You Try To Create A Type, You May End With Nothing. If You Do A Good Job Of Creating An Individual, You May Succeed At Creating A Type.

It Is Not Life That's Complicated, It's The Struggle To Guide And Control Life.

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

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

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.

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.

Don't Forget Who You Are And Where You Come From.

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.

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.

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

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

Great Gatsby Important

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.

I Can’t Exactly Describe How I Feel But It’s Not Quite Right. And It Leaves Me Cold.

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

Amory Thought How It Was Only The Past That Seemed Strange And Unbelievable.

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

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.

The Past--the Wild Charge At The Head Of His Men Up San Juan Hill; The First Years Of His Marriage When He Worked Late Into The Summer Dusk Down In The Busy City For Young Hildegarde Whom He Loved; The Days Before That When He Sat Smoking Far Into The Night In The Gloomy Old Button House On Monroe Street With His Grandfather-all These Had Faded Like Unsubstantial Dreams From His Mind As Though They Had Never Been. He Did Not Remember.

Englishmen Must Have An Island.

The Afternoon Had Made Them Tranquil For A While, As If To Give Them A Deep Memory For The Long Parting The Next Day Promised.

I Began To Realize That For Two Years My Life Had Been A Drawing On Resources That I Did Not Possess, That I Had Been Mortgaging Myself Physically And Spiritually Up To The Hilt.

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

Gatsby Turned Out All Right At The End; It Is What Preyed On Gatsby, What Foul Dust Floated In The Wake Of His Dreams That Temporarily Closed Out My Interest In The Abortive Sorrows And Short-winded Elations Of Men.

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.

Actually That’s My Secret — I Can’t Even Talk About You To Anybody Because I Don’t Want Any More People To Know How Wonderful You Are.

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

Great Gatsby Love

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

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

I Like People And I Like Them To Like Me, But I Wear My Heart Where God Put It, On The Inside.

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

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

I Want To Just Be Lazy And I Want Some Of The People Around Me To Be Doing Things, Because That Makes Me Feel Comfortable And Safe - And I Want Some Of Them To Be Doing Nothing At All, Because They Can Be Graceful And Companionable For Me.

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

Amory: I Love You. Rosalind: I Love You- Now.

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.

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.

A Writer's Temperament Is Continually Making Him Do Things He Can Never Repair.

I Think They're Very Attractive,' Abe Agreed. 'i Just Don't Think They're Attractive, That's All.

The World Only Exists In Your Eyes. You Can Make It As Big Or As Small As You Want

And Lastly From That Period I Remember Riding In A Taxi One Afternoon Between Very Tall Buildings Under A Mauve And Rosy Sky; I Began To Bawl Because I Had Everything I Wanted And Knew I Would Never Be So Happy Again.

...the Test Of A First-rate Intelligence Is The Ability To Hold Two Opposed Ideas In The Mind At The Same Time, And Still Retain The Ability To Function. One Should, For Example, Be Able To See That Things Are Hopeless And Yet Be Determined To Make Them Otherwise. This Philosophy Fitted On To My Early Adult Life, When I Saw The Improbable, The Implausible, Often The "impossible," Come True.

Positive Thinking

Positive Attitude

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.

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.

In The Morning You Were Never Violently Sorry-- You Made No Resolutions, But If You Had Overdone It And Your Heart Was Slightly Out Of Order, You Went On The Wagon For A Few Days Without Saying Anything About It, And Waited Until An Accumulation Of Nervous Boredom Projected You Into Another Party.

The Compensation Of A Very Early Success Is A Conviction That Life Is A Romantic Matter. In The Best Sense One Stays Young.

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.

Often A Man Can Play The Helpless Child In Front Of A Woman, But He Can Almost Never Bring It Off When He Feels Most Like A Helpless Child.

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.

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. From The Western Half Of The Sky The Sun Was Shying Little Golden Disks At The Sea--if You Gazed Intently Enough You Could See Them Skip From Wave Tip To Wave Tip Until They Joined A Broad Collar Of Golden Coin That Was Collecting Half A Mile Out And Would Eventually Be A Dazzling Sunset.

All That Kept Her From Breaking Was That It Was Not An Image Of Strength That Was Leaving Her; She Would Be Just As Strong Without Him.

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.

He Lifted His Arms To The Crystaline, Radiant Sky. "i Know Myself," He Cried, "but That Is All.

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.

Marriage Was Created Not To Be A Background But To Need One. Mine Is Going To Be Outstanding. It Can't, Shan't Be The Setting - It's Going To Be The Performance, The Lively, Lovely, Glamorous Performance, And The World Shall Be The Scenery.

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.

...for A Moment People Set Down Their Glasses In County Clubs And Speak-easies And Thought Of Their Old Best Dreams.

Do You Ever Wait For The Longest Day Of The Year And Then Miss It? I Always Wait For The Longest Day Of The Year And Then Miss It!

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.

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.

Well, I Can't Describe Her Exactly-except To Say That She Was Beautiful. She Was-tremendously Alive.

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.

The Helpless Ecstasy Of Loosing Himself In Her Charm Was A Powerful Opiate Rather Than A Tonic.

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

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.

God Knows What You've Been Doing, Everything You've Been Doing. You May Fool Me, But You Can't Fool God!

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

Great Gatsby American Dream

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

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.

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.

I Want To Be A Society Vampire, You See.

He Could Transform The Barest Incident Into A Thing Of Curve And Contour.

No One Person In The World Is Necessary To You Or To Me.

The Exhilarating Ripple Of Her Voice Was A Wild Tonic In The Rain.

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

I'm A Slave To My Emotions, To My Likes, To My Hatred Of Boredom, To Most Of My Desires

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

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

Life Is A Comedy For Those Who Think And A Tragedy For Those Who Feel. Show Me A Hero And I Will Write You A Tragedy.

I Couldn't Forgive Him Or Like Him, But I Saw That What He Had Done Was, To Him, Entirely Justified.

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

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.

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.

One Thin's Sure And Nothing's Surer The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get - Children. In The Meantime, In Between Time...

All The Time Something Within Her Was Crying For A Decision. She Wanted Her Life Shaped Now, Immediately — And The Decision Must Be Made By Some Force — Of Love, Of Money, Of Unquestionable Practicality — That Was Close At Hand

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.

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.

Don't Be So Anxious About It,' She Laughed. 'i'm Not Used To Being Loved. I Wouldn't Know What To Do; I Never Got The Trick Of It.' She Looked Down At Him, Shy And Fatigued. 'so Here We Are. I Told You Years Ago That I Had The Makings Of Cinderella.' He Took Her Hand; She Drew It Back Instinctively And Then Replaced It In His. 'beg Your Pardon. Not Even Used To Being Touched. But I'm Not Afraid Of You, If You Stay Quiet And Don't Move Suddenly.

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.

I Think That We Already Have A Really Good System In Town, But I Have A Vision That It Could Be Even Better. My Vision Is That Academic Excellence Is The Area That We Should Pursue More, Coupled With Fiscal Discipline.

Academic Excellence

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

If You Are Strong Enough, There Are No Precedents.

No Matter How Low You Go, There's Always An Unexplored Basement.

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.

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

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

I Want To Know You Moved And Breathed In The Same World With Me.

...one Emotion After Another Crept Into Her Face Like Objects Into A Slowly Developing Picture.

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.

At Eighteen Our Convictions Are Hills From Which We Look; At Forty-five They Are Caves In Which We Hide.

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 Used To Build Dreams About You.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

It’s Just That I Feel So Sad These Wonderful Nights. I Sort Of Feel They’re Never Coming Again, And I’m Not Really Getting All I Could Out Of Them.

Happiness Is The Relief After Extreme Tension

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

Nothing Is As Obnoxious As Other People's Luck.

She Saw Him The First Day On Board, And Then Her Heart Sank Into Her Shoes As She Realized At Last How Much She Wanted Him. No Matter What His Past Was, No Matter What He Had Done. Which Was Not To Say That She Would Ever Let Him Know, But Only That He Moved Her Chemically More Than Anyone She Had Ever Met, That All Other Men Seemed Pale Beside Him.

You're Not Sorry To Go, Of Course. With People Like Us Our Home Is Where We Are Not... No One Person In The World Is Necessary To You Or To Me.

I Love This Simply Because It's Cute, And I Guess It's A Sign Of The Times In Many Respect. It's Pretty Much Saying You Complete Me, Only In The Sweetest Way Possible.

...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.

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...

I Was In Love With A Whirlwind, So When The Girl Threw Me Over, I Went Home And Finished My Novel.

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.

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