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His Youth Seemed Never So Vanished As Now In The Contrast Between The Utter Loneliness Of This Visit And That Riotous, Joyful Party Of Four Years Before. Things That Had Been The Merest Commonplaces Of His Life Then, Deep Sleep, The Sense Of Beauty Around Him, All Desire, Had Flown Away And The Gaps They Left Were Filled Only With The Great Listlessness Of His Disillusion.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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His Youth Seemed Never

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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His Youth Seemed Never So Vanished As Now In The Contrast Between The Utter Loneliness Of This Visit And That Riotous, Joyful Party Of Four Years Before. Things That Had Been The Merest Commonplaces Of His Life Then, Deep Sleep, The Sense Of Beauty Around Him, All Desire, Had Flown Away And The Gaps They Left Were Filled Only With The Great Listlessness Of His Disillusion.

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Very Few Of The People Who Accentuate The Futility Of Life Remark The Futility Of Themselves. Perhaps They Think That In Proclaiming The Evil Of Living They Somehow Salvage Their Own Worth From The Ruin - But They Don't, Even You And I.

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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.

Personality Is An Unbroken Series Of Successful Gestures.

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

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

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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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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People Living Alone Get Used To Loneliness.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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You Once Liked Me, Didn't You?, He Asked. Liked You- I Loved You. Everybody Loved You. You Could've Had Anybody You Wanted For The Asking.

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

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

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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.

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

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.

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

There's So Much Spring In The Air- There's So Much Lazy Sweetness In Your Heart.

Optimism Is The Content Of Small Men In High Places.

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

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I Was Thirty. Before Me Stretched The Portentous, Menacing Road Of A New Decade.

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

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

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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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Never Confuse Activity With Action.

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.

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.

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

Great Gatsby Book

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

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

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.

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

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

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

You're A Slave, A Bound Helpless Slave To One Thing In The World, Your Imagination.

He Had Been Full Of The Idea So Long, Dreamed It Right Through To The End, Waited With His Teeth Set, So To Speak, At An Inconceivable Pitch Of Intensity. Now, In The Reaction, He Was Running Down Like An Overwound Clock.

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

Tender Is The Night

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

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

He Dispensed Starlight To Casual Moths.

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

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

Nancy Had A Mouth Like A Remembered Kiss.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

It Takes A Genius To Whine Appealingly.

To Write It, It Took Three Months; To Conceive It Three Minutes; To Collect The Data In It All My Life.

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

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.

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

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

We All Have Souls Of Different Ages

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

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

In A Few Days I'll Have Lived One Score And Three Days In This Vale Of Tears. On I Plod-always Bored, Often Drunk, Doing No Penance For My Faults-rather Do I Become More Tolerant Of Myself From Day To Day, Hardening My Crystal Heart With Blasphemous Humor And Shunning Only Toothpicks, Pathos, And Poverty As Being The Three Unforgivable Things In Life.

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

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.

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.

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.

Girls Like You Are Responsible For All The Tiresome Colorless Marriages; All Those Ghastly Inefficiencies That Pass As Feminine Qualities. What A Blow It Must Be When A Man With Imagination Marries The Beautiful Bundle Of Clothes That He's Been Building Ideals Around, And Finds That She's Just A Weak, Whining, Cowardly Mass Of Affectations!

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

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

She Knew Few Words And Believed In None.

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.

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

Great Gatsby American Dream

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.

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.

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.

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

The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get - Children.

Great Gatsby Book

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Great Gatsby Nick

Wine Gave A Sort Of Gallantry To Their Own Failure.

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.

When A Girl Feels That She’s Perfectly Groomed And Dressed She Can Forget That Part Of Her. That’s Charm

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.

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