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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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I'll Never Be A

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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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.

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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.

A Writer Wastes Nothing.

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

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.

At Any Rate, Let Us Love For A While, For A Year Or So, You And Me. That's A Form Of Divine Drunkenness That We Can All Try. There Are Only Diamonds In The Whole World, Diamonds And Perhaps The Shabby Gift Of Disillusion.

You Are The Loveliest Thing That I Have Ever Known.

Too Much Of Anything Is Bad, But Too Much Champagne Is Just Right.

Now The Standard Cure For One Who Is Sunk Is To Consider Those In Actual Destitution Or Physical Suffering

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

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

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.

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.

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'm A Cynical Idealist.

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.

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.

New York Had All The Iridescence Of The Beginning Of The World. The Returning Troops Marched Up Fifth Avenue And Girls Were Instinctively Drawn East And North Toward Them - This Was The Greatest Nation And There Was Gala In The Air.

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.

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.

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

It's A Mining Town In Lotus Land.

I've Got An Adjective That Just Fits You.

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

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

I Never Blame Failure - There Are Too Many Complicated Situations In Life - But I Am Absolutely Merciless Toward Lack Of Effort.

Situations In Life

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

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

Gold? Yellow, Glittering, Precious Gold?... This Yellow Slave Will Knit And Break Religions, Bless Th' Accursed, Make The Hoar Leprosy Adored, Place Thieves, And Give Them Title, Knee And Approbation With Senators On The Bench.

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

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

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

You Are Mysterious, I Love You. You’re Beautiful, Intelligent, And Virtuous, And That’s The Rarest Known Combination.

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

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

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

Forgotten Is Forgiven.

I Couldn’t Forgive Him Or Like Him, But I Saw That What He Had Done Was, To Him, Entirely Justified. It Was All Very Careless And Confused. They Were Careless People, Tom And Daisy—they Smashed Up Things And Creatures And Then Retreated Back Into Their Money Or Their Vast Carelessness, Or Whatever It Was That Kept Them Together, And Let Other People Clean Up The Mess They Had Made.

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

Great Gatsby Love

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

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.

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

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

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.

Isn't Hollywood A Dump-in The Human Sense Of The Word. A Hideous Town, Pointed Up By The Insulting Gardens Of Its Rich, Full Of The Human Spirit At A New Low Of Debasement.

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.

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.

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

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

She Was A Faded But Still Lovely Woman Of Twenty-seven.

Nothing Any Good Isn't Hard.

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.

Character Is Plot, Plot Is Character.

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.

I Talk With The Authority Of Failure - Ernest With The Authority Of Success. We Could Never Sit Across The Same Table Again.

Baseball Is A Game Played By Idiots For Morons.

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

I Want Leisure To Read—an Immense Amount.

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.

Tired, Tired With Nothing, Tired With Everything, Tired With The World’s Weight He Had Never Chosen To Bear.

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

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.

I Want To Be A Society Vampire, You See.

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.

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

The Rhythm Of The Weekend, With Its Birth, Its Planned Gaiety, And Its Announced End, Followed The Rhythm Of Life And Was A Substitute For It.

I Want To Do Everything In The World With You.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I Am One Of The Few Honest People That I Have Ever Known.

Great Gatsby Important

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

Take Off That Darn Fur Coat!...or Maybe You'd Like To Have Us Open All The Windows.

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.

Personality Is An Unbroken Series Of Successful Gestures.

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.

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

Her Face Was Sad And Lovely With Bright Things In It, Bright Eyes And A Bright Passionate Mouth, But There Was An Excitement In Her Voice That Men Who Had Cared For Her Found Difficult To Forget: A Singing Compulsion, A Whispered “listen,” A Promise That She Had Done Gay, Exciting Things Just A While Since And That There Were Gay, Exciting Things Hovering In The Next Hour.

I Have Never Wished There Was A God To Call On- I Have Often Wished There Was A God To Thank.

I'm Not Much Like Myself Any More.

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

The World Is Always Curious, And People Become Valuable Merely For Their Inaccessibility

An Unread Book Is Just A Block Of Paper.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

When A Man Is Tired Of Life On His 21st Birthday It Indicates That He Is Rather Tired Of Something In Himself.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

She Saw Something Awful In The Very Simplicity She Failed To Understand.

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.

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

Great Gatsby Important

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.

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

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

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

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

A Classic,' Suggested Anthony, 'is A Successful Book That Has Survived The Reaction Of The Next Period Or Generation. Then It's Safe, Like A Style In Architecture Or Furniture. It's Acquired A Picturesque Dignity To Take The Place Of Its Fashion.

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

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

The Transition From Libertine To Prig Was So Complete.

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

Amory Wondered How People Could Fail To Notice That He Was A Boy Marked For Glory, And When Faces Of The Throng Turned Toward Him And Ambiguous Eyes Stared Into His, He Assumed The Most Romantic Of Expressions And Walked On The Air Cushions That Lie On The Asphalts Of Fourteen.

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

Fairies: Nature's Attempt To Get Rid Of Soft Boys By Sterilizing Them.

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

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.

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

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

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

One Of Those Men Who Reach Such An Acute Limited Excellence At Twenty−one That Everything Afterward Savors Of Anti−climax.

Debut: The First Time A Young Girl Is Seen Drunk In Public.

Family Quarrels Are Bitter Things. They Don't Go According To Any Rules. They're Not Like Aches Or Wounds, They're More Like Splits In The Skin That Won't Heal Because There's Not Enough Material.

I’m Not Sure What I’ll Do, But— Well, I Want To Go Places And See People. I Want My Mind To Grow. I Want To Live Where Things Happen On A Big Scale.

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

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

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

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 Won’t Kiss You. It Might Get To Be A Habit And I Can’t Get Rid Of Habits.

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.

She Was Beautiful, But Not Like Those Girls In The Magazines. She Was Beautiful, For The Way She Thought. She Was Beautiful, For The Sparkle In Her Eyes When She Talked About Something She Loved. She Was Beautiful, For Her Ability To Make Other People Smile, Even If She Was Sad. No, She Wasn't Beautiful For Something As Temporary As Her Looks. She Was Beautiful, Deep Down To Her Soul. She Is Beautiful.

Courage To Me Means Ploughing Through That Dull Gray Mist That Comes Down On Life-not Only Overriding People And Circumstances But Overriding The Bleakness Of Living. A Sort Of Insistence On The Value Of Life And The Worth Of Transient Things...my Courage Is Faith-faith In The Eternal Resilience Of Me-that Joy'll Come Back, And Hope And Spontaneity. And I Feel That Till It Does, I've Got To Keep My Lips Shut And My Chin High, And My Eyes Wide

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!

Beauty Means The Scent Of Roses And Then The Death Of Roses

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.

The Cracked Plate Has To Be Retained In The Pantry, Has To Be Kept In Service As A Household Necessity. It Can Never Be Warmed On The Stove Nor Shuffled With The Other Plates In The Dishpan; It Will Not Be Brought Out For Company But It Will Do To Hold Crackers Late At Night Or To Go Into The Ice-box With The Left Overs.

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

I Don't Like Girls In The Daytime,' He Said Shortly, And Then Thinking This A Bit Abrupt, He Added: 'but I Like You.' He Cleared His Throat. 'i Like You First And Second And Third.

A Love Affair Is Like A Short Story--it Has A Beginning, A Middle, And An End. The Beginning Was Easy, The Middle Might Drag, Invaded By Commonplace, But The End, Instead Of Being Decisive And Well Knit With That Element Of Revelatory Surprise As A Well-written Story Should Be, It Usually Dissipated In A Succession Of Messy And Humiliating Anticlimaxes.

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.

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

Once I Thought That Lake Forest Was The Most Glamorous Place In The World. Maybe It Was.

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

Great Gatsby Book

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

I Used To Build Dreams About You.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Futility Of Life

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.

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

Her Voice Is Full Of Money.

You’re Just The Romantic Age,” She Continued- “fifty. Twenty-five Is Too Worldly Wise; Thirty Is Apt To Be Pale From Overwork; Forty Is The Age Of Long Stories That Take A Whole Cigar To Tell; Sixty Is- Oh, Sixty Is Too Near Seventy; But Fifty Is The Mellow Age. I Love Fifty.” - Hildegarde

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

"what Are You Going To Do?" "can't Say - Run For President, Write -" "greenwich Village?" "good Heavens, No - I Said Write - Not Drink."

A Stirring Warmth Flowed From Her, As If Her Heart Was Trying To Come Out To You Concealed In One Of Those Breathless, Thrilling Words.

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

He 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.

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.

It Was Dawn Now On Long Island And We Went About Opening The Rest Of The Windows Downstairs, Filling The House With Gray-turning, Gold-turning Light. The Shadow Of A Tree Fell Abruptly Across The Dew And Ghostly Birds Began To Sing Among The Blue Leaves. There Was A Slow, Pleasant Movement In The Air, Scarcely A Wind, Promising A Cool, Lovely Day.

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

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

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.

America Is A Willingness Of The Heart.

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

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.

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

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

Eighteen Might Look At Thirty-four Through A Rising Mist Of Adolescence, But Twenty-two Would See Thirty-eight With Discerning Clarity.

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

The Mouth Was Wide Open And Ripped At The Corners, As Though She Had Choked A Little In Giving Up The Tremendous Vitality She Had Stored So Long.

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

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

I Just Couldn't Make The Grade As A Hack-that, Like Everything Else, Requires A Certain Practiced Excellence.

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.

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

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

And I Like Large Parties. They’re So Intimate. At Small Parties There Isn’t Any Privacy.

It Takes Two To Make An Accident.

So We'll Just Let Things Take Their Course, And Never Be Sorry.

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.

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

I Like France, Where Everybody Thinks He's Napoleon--down Here Everybody Thinks He's Christ.

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

Then She Added In A Sort Of Childish Delight: 'we'll Be Poor, Won't We? Like People In Books. And I'll Be An Orphan And Utterly Free. Free And Poor! What Fun!' She Stopped And Raised Her Lips To Him In A Delighted Kiss. 'it's Impossible To Be Both Together,' Said John Grimly. 'people Have Found That Out. And I Should Choose To Be Free As Preferable Of The Two.

I Am Tired Of Knowing Nothing And Being Reminded Of It All The Time.

Knowing Nothing

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Aleksandar Hemon

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