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Here Was A New Generation, Shouting The Old Cries, Learning The Old Creeds, Through A Revery Of Long Days And Nights; Destined Finally To Go Out Into That Dirty Gray Turmoil To Follow Love And Pride; 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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Here Was A New

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Here Was A New Generation, Shouting The Old Cries, Learning The Old Creeds, Through A Revery Of Long Days And Nights; Destined Finally To Go Out Into That Dirty Gray Turmoil To Follow Love And Pride; 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.

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Nancy Had A Mouth Like A Remembered Kiss.

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

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.

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

The Sign Of Intelligence Is The Ability To Carry Opposed Thoughts At The Same Time.

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.

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.

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

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.

Every One Suspects Himself Of At Least One Of The Cardinal Virtues, And This Is Mine: I Am One Of The Few Honest People That I Have Ever Known.

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

For A While These Reveries Provided An Outlet For His Imagination; They Were A Satisfactory Hint Of The Unreality Of Reality, A Promise That The Rock Of The World Was Founded Securely On A Fairy's Wing.

I Hate Dainty Minds,' Answered Marjorie. 'but A Girl Has To Be Dainty In Person. If She Looks Like A Million Dollars She Can Talk About Russia, Ping-pong, Or The League Of Nations And Get Away With It.

But I Suppose You Must Touch Life In Order To Spring From It.

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

People Living Alone Get Used To Loneliness.

This Is Perhaps The Best Feeling In The World. I Love Going To Sleep At Night And Wondering What Weird And Wonderful Dreams I'm Going To Have However I Always Prolong Sleep As Long As Possible, Immeasurably Happy Simply Listening To The Sound Of My Fiancees Breathing And Feeling His Arms Around Me. It's When You Fall In Love With These Little Things That You Know You're Truly In Love.

Falling In Love

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

I Never Noticed The Stars Before. I Always Thought Of Them As Great Big Diamonds That Belonged To Some One. Now They Frighten Me. They Make Me Feel That It Was All A Dream, All My Youth.

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.

She Wouldn't Let Go Of The Letter. She Took It Into The Tub With Her And Squeezed It Up In A Wet Ball, And Only Let Me Leave It In The Soap Dish When She Saw That It Was Coming To Pieces Like Snow.

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.

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.

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?

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.

I Was Within And Without. Simultaneously Enchanted And Repelled By The Inexhaustible Variety Of Life.

Great Gatsby Book

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

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.

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

Most People Think Everybody Feels About Them Much More Violently Than They Actually Do; They Think Other People's Opinions Of Them Swing Through Great Arcs Of Approval Or Disapproval.

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.

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

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

He Snatched The Book From Me And Replaced It Hastily On Its Shelf, Muttering That If One Brick Was Removed The Whole Library Was Liable To Collapse.

Life Starts All Over Again When It Gets Crisp In The Fall.

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

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.

I've Got An Adjective That Just Fits You.

I Used To Build Dreams About You.

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

Tender Is The Night

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

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.

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.

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

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

America Is A Willingness Of The Heart.

I Had A Strong Sudden Instinct That I Must Be Alone. I Didn’t Want To See Any People At All. I Had Seen So Many People All My Life -- I Was An Average Mixer, But More Than Average In A Tendency To Identify Myself, My Ideas, My Destiny, With Those Of All Classes That Came In Contact With. I Was Always Saving Or Being Saved -- In A Single Morning I Would Go Through The Emotions Ascribable To Wellington At Waterloo. I Lived In A World Of Inscrutable Hostiles And Inalienable Friends And Supporters.

The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get - Children.

Great Gatsby Book

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

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

I'm Not Much Like Myself Any More.

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.

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.

It's Not A Slam At You When People Are Rude, It's A Slam At The People They've Met Before.

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

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

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

Forgotten Is Forgiven.

You Remind Me Of A Smoked Cigarette.

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

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 Just Because I Love The Past That I Want This House To Look Back On Its Glamourous Moment Of Youth And Beauty, And I Want Its Stairs To Creak As If To The Footsteps Of Women With Hoop Skirts And Men In Boots And Spurs. But They've Made It Into A Blondined, Rouged-up Old Woman Of Sixty.

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

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.

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.

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

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

She Was Incurably Dishonest.

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.

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.

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

The Loneliest Moment In Someone’s Life Is When They Are Watching Their Whole World Fall Apart, And All They Can Do Is Stare Blankly.

I Had Traded The Fight Against Love For The Fight Against Loneliness, The Fight Against Life For The Fight Against Death.

Long Afterward Amory Thought Of Sophomore Spring As The Happiest Time Of His Life. His Ideas Were In Tune With Life As He Found It; He Wanted No More Than To Drift And Dream And Enjoy A Dozen New-found Friendships Through The April Afternoons.

Only Remember West Of The Mississippi It's A Little More Look, See, Act. A Little Less Rationalize, Comment, Talk.

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

"oh, You Want Too Much!" She Cried To Gatsby. "i Love You Now - Isn't That Enough? I Can't Help What's Past." She Began To Sob Helplessly. "i Did Love Him Once-but I Loved You Too." Gatsby's Eyes Opened And Closed. "you Loved Me Too?" He Repeated. "even That's A Lie," Said Tom Savagely. "she Didn't Know You Were Alive. Why - There're Things Between Daisy And Me That You'll Never Know, Things That Neither Of Us Can Ever Forget."

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

Kiss Me Now, Love Me Now.

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--

But He Hated To Be Sober. It Made Him Conscious Of The People Around Him, Of That Air Of Struggle, Of Greedy Ambition, Of Hope More Sordid Than Despair, Of Incessant Passage Up Or Down.

One Hurries Through, Even Though There's Time; The Past, The Continent, Is Behind; The Future Is The Glowing Mouth In The Side Of The Ship; The Dim, Turbulent Alley Is Too Confusedly The Present.

Joan Crawford Is Doubtless The Best Example Of The Flapper, The Girl You See In Smart Night Clubs, Gowned To The Apex Of Sophistication, Toying Iced Glasses With A Remote, Faintly Bitter Expression, Dancing Deliciously, Laughing A Great Deal, With Wide, Hurt Eyes. Young Things With A Talent For Living.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Victor Belongs To The Spoils.

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.

You Know I'm Old In Some Ways-in Others-well, I'm Just A Little Girl. I Like Sunshine And Pretty Things And Cheerfulness-and I Dread Responsibility.

How Strange To Have Failed As A Social Creature—even Criminals Do Not Fail That Way—they Are The Law's "loyal Opposition," So To Speak. But The Insane Are Always Mere Guests On Earth, Eternal Strangers Carrying Around Broken Decalogues That They Cannot Read.

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.

Great Gatsby Book

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.

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

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

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.

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

You Can Take Hollywood For Granted Like I Did, Or You Can Dismiss It With The Contempt We Reserve For What We Don't Understand. It Can Be Understood Too, But Only Dimly And In Flashes. Not Half A Dozen Men Have Ever Been Able To Keep The Whole Equation Of Pictures In Their Heads.

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.

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.

How The Unforgettable Faces Of Dusk Would Blend To Her, The Myriad Footsteps, A Thousand Overtures, Would Blend To Her Footsteps; And There Would Be More Drunkenness Than Wine In The Softness Of Her Eyes On His.

Once In A While I Go Off On A Spree And Make A Fool Of Myself, But I Always Come Back, And In My Heart I Love Her All The Time. - The Great Gatsby.

Great Gatsby Love

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

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.

...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.

Character Is Plot, Plot Is Character.

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

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.

Never Confuse Activity With Action.

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

I Want To Be A Society Vampire, You See.

Amory Took To Writing Poetry On Spring Afternoons, In The Gardens Of The Big Estates Near Princeton, While Swans Made Effective Atmosphere In The Artificial Pools, And Slow Clouds Sailed Harmoniously Above The Willow. May Came Too Soon, And Suddenly Unable To Bear Walls, He Wandered The Campus At All Hours Through Starlight And Rain.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Tender Is The Night

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.

I Want To Tell You About Your Heart— You've Probably Been Neglecting Your Heart—and You Don’t Know.

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

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

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

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

When I'm With You, I Don't Breathe Quite Right.

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

Punctuation Marks

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

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

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.

Think How You Love Me,' She Whispered. 'i Don't Ask You To Love Me Always Like This, But I Ask You To Remember.' You'll Always Be Like This To Me.' Oh No; But Promise Me You'll Remember.' Her Tears Were Falling. 'i'll Be Different, But Somewhere Lost Inside Me There'll Always Be The Person I Am Tonight.

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

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.

The Bottle Of Whiskey - The Second One - Was Now In Constant Demand By All Present, Excepting Catherine, Who 'felt Just As Good On Nothing At All.

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.

Trouble Has No Necessary Connection With Discouragement. Discouragement Has A Germ Of Its Own, As Different From Trouble As Arthritis Is Different From A Stiff Joint.

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.

A Writer Wastes Nothing.

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

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

Prose Talent Depends On Having Something To Say And An Interesting, Highly Developed Way Of Saying It.

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.

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.

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.

We Both Fitted. If Our Corners Were Not Rubbed Off They Were At Least Pulled In. But Deep In Us Both Was Something That Made Us Require More For Happiness. I Didn't Know What I Wanted

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

Happiness Is The Relief After Extreme Tension

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.

He Dispensed Starlight To Casual Moths.

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

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

Great Gatsby Love

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.

The Sun Had Gone Down Behind The Tall Apartments Of The Movie Stars In The West Fifties, And The Unclear Voices Of Children, Already Gathered Like Crikets On The Grass, Rose Through The Hot Twilight.

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.

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

An Author Ought To Write For The Youth Of His Own Generation, The Critics Of The Next, And The Schoolmaster Of Ever Afterwards.

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

You Have A Place In My Heart No One Else Ever Could Have.

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.

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

He Snatched Out His Hand Desperately As If To Snatch Only A Wisp Of Air, To Save A Fragment Of The Spot That She Had Made Lovely For Him. But It Was All Going By Too Fast Now For His Burred Eyes And He Knew That He Had Lost That Part Of It, The Freshest And The Best, Forever.

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.

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.

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.

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

She Smiled At Him, Making Sure That The Smile Gathered Up Everything Inside Her And Directed It Toward Him, Making Him A Profound Promise Of Herself For So Little, For The Beat Of A Response, The Assurance Of A Complimentary Vibration In Him.

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

...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

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

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.

The Transition From Libertine To Prig Was So Complete.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Baseball Is A Game Played By Idiots For Morons.

The Greatest Profound Pain Is Cased By, And Is The Result Of Our Own Illusions, Fantasies And Dreams.

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.

There Must Have Been Moments Even That Afternoon When Daisy Tumbled Short Of His Dreams -- Not Through Her Own Fault, But Because Of The Colossal Vitality Of His Illusion. It Had Gone Beyond Her, Beyond Everything. He Had Thrown Himself Into It With A Creative Passion, Adding To It All The Time, Decking It Out With Every Bright Feather That Drifted His Way. No Amount Of Fire Or Freshness Can Challenge What A Man Will Store Up In His Ghostly Heart.

Shakespeare--whetting, Frustrating, Surprising And Gratifying.

Murder Your Darlings.

I'm Inclined To Reserve All Judgments, A Habit That Has Opened Up Many Curious Natures To Me And Also Made Me The Victim Of Not A Few Veteran Bores.

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

Poetry Is Either Something That Lives Like Fire Inside You -- Like Music To The Musician Or Marxism To The Communist -- Or Else It Is Nothing, An Empty, Formalized Bore Around Which Pedants Can Endlessly Drone Their Notes And Explanations.

Once We Were One Person, And Always It Will Be A Little That Way.

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

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.

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

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

Reserving Judgements Is A Matter Of Infinite Hope.

I'm In A Muddle About A Lot Of Things -- I've Just Discovered That I've A Mind, And I'm Starting To Read" "read What?" "everything. I Have To Pick And Choose, Of Course, But Mostly Things That Make Me Think.

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.

Almost Everybody Can Be Imagined As Either A Cat Or A Dog.

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

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