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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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I Must Hold In

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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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.

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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.

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.

It Is Difficult For Young People To Live Things Down. We Will Tolerate Vice, Grand Larceny And The Quieter Forms Of Murder In Our Contemporaries... But Our Children's Friends Must Show A Blank Service Record.

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'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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Montana Sunset Lay Between The Mountains Like A Giant Bruise From Which Darkened Arteries Spread Across A Poisoned Sky.

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

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

Nothing Any Good Isn't Hard.

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.

Dishonesty In A Woman Is A Thing You Never Blame Deeply.

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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.

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 Strongest Guard Is Placed At The Gateway To Nothing. Maybe Because The Condition Of Emptiness Is Too Shameful To Be Divulged.

Tender Is The Night

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

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

After All, Life Hasn't Much To Offer Except Youth, And I Suppose For Older People, The Love Of Youth In Others.

I Hope You Make The Best Of It. And I Hope You See Things That Startle You. I Hope You Feel Things You Never Felt Before. I Hope You Meet People With A Different Point Of View. I Hope You Live A Life You're Proud Of. If You Find That You're Not, I Hope You Have The Strength To Start All Over Again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Yale Is November, Crisp And Energetic.

How I Feel Is That If I Wanted Anything I'd Take It. That's What I've Always Thought All My Life. But It Happens That I Want You, And So I Just Haven't Room For Any Other Desires.

Happiness Is The Relief After Extreme Tension

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

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

All Things Come To Him Who Mates.

I Don't Want To Repeat My Innocence. I Want The Pleasure Of Losing It Again.

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.

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

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

If You Are Strong Enough, There Are No Precedents.

Strange Children Should Smile At Each Other And Say, "let's Play.

She Admired Him; She Was Used To Clutching Her Hands Together In His Wake And Heaving Audible Sighs.

I Hope You Live A Life You're Proud Of...

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 Was A Little Shocked At The Elaborateness Of The Lie.

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

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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.

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

An Unread Book Is Just A Block Of Paper.

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.

I Used To Build Dreams About You.

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.

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.

It's Never Too Late Or, In My Case, Too Early To Be Whoever You Want To Be.

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

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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.

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She Was Incurably Dishonest.

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

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Advertising Is A Racket, Like The Movies And The Brokerage Business. You Cannot Be Honest Without Admitting That Its Constructive Contribution To Humanity Is Exactly Minus Zero.

Forgotten Is Forgiven.

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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.

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

She Felt A Little Betrayed And Sad, But Presently A Moving Object Came Into Sight. It Was A Huge Horse-chestnut Tree In Full Bloom Bound For The Champs Elysees, Strapped Now Into A Long Truck And Simply Shaking With Laughter - Like A Lovely Person In An Undignified Position Yet Confident None The Less Of Being Lovely. Looking At It With Fascination, Rosemary Identified Herself With It, And Laughed Cheerfully With It, And Everything All At Once Seemed Gorgeous.

Her Beauty Climbed The Rolling Slope, It Came Into The Room, Rustling Ghost-like Through The Curtains.

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

There Is No Confusion Like The Confusion Of A Simple Mind.

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

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

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Whenever You Feel Like Criticizing Any One... Just Remember That All The People In This World Haven't Had The Advantages That You've Had.

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

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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.

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

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

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...

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.

Something Was Making Him Nibble At The Edge Of Stale Ideas As If His Sturdy Physical Egotism No Longer Nourished His Peremptory Heart.

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

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He Looked At Her And For A Moment She Lived In The Bright Blue Worlds Of His Eyes, Eagerly And Confidently.

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

The World, As A Rule, Does Not Live On Beaches And In Country Clubs.

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

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.

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.

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.

You've Got An Awfully Kissable Mouth.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Possibly It Had Occurred To Him The Colossal Significance Of That Light Had Now Vanished Forever. [...] It Had Seemed As Close As A Star To The Moon. Now It Was A Green Light On A Dock. His Count Of Enchanted Objects Had Diminished By One.

It Was Too Late - Everything Was Too Late. For Years Now He Had Dreamed The World Away, Basing His Decisions Upon Emotions Unstable As Water.

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.

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

Tender Is The Night

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

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

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

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

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

I Learned A Little Of Beauty - Enough To Know That It Had Nothing To Do With Truth.

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

I Want Leisure To Read—an Immense Amount.

Better Let It All Alone In The Depths Of Her Heart And The Depths Of The Sea.

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

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

I See Now That This Has Been A Story Of The West, After All--tom And Gatsby, Daisy And Jordan And I, Were All Westerners, And Perhaps We Possessed Some Deficiency In Common Which Made Us Subtly Unadaptable To Eastern Life.

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.

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

Americans, While Occasionally Willing To Be Serfs, Have Always Been Obstinate About Being Peasantry.

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

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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.

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

Never Befuddle A Solitary Thrashing With A Last Annihilation.

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.

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

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.

I Don't Much Care Where I Am Anymore, Nor Expect Very Much From Places.

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.

She Was Beautiful - But Especially She Was Without Mercy.

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.

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

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This Is A Valley Of Ashes--a Fantastic Farm Where Ashes Grow Like Wheat Into Ridges And Hills And Grotesque Gardens; Where Ashes Take The Forms Of Houses And Chimneys And Rising Smoke And, Finally, With A Transcendent Effort, Of Men Who Move Dimly And Already Crumbling Through The Powdery Air. Occasionally A Line Of Gray Cars Crawls Along An Invisible Track, Gives Out A Ghastly Creak, And Comes To Rest, And Immediately The Ash-gray Men Swarm Up With Leaden Spades And Stir Up An Impenetrable Cloud, Which Screens Their Obscure Operations From Your Sight.

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

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.

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No Amount Of Fire Or Freshness Can Challenge What A Man Will Store Up In His Ghostly Heart.

They Always Believe That 'things Are In A Bad Way Now,' But They 'haven't Any Faith In These Idealists.' One Minute They Call Wilson 'just A Dreamer, Not Practical'- A Year Later They Rail At Him For Making His Dreams Realities. They Haven't Clear Logical Ideas On One Single Subject Except A Sturdy, Stolid Opposition To All Change. They Don't Think Uneducated People Should Be Highly Paid, But They Won't See That If They Don't Pay The Uneducated People Their Children Are Going To Be Uneducated Too, And We're Going Round And Round In A Circle. That- Is The Great Middle Class.

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.

Draw Your Chair Up Close To The Edge Of The Precipice And I’ll Tell You A Story.

People Talk Of The Courage Of Convictions, But In Actual Life A Man's Duty To His Family May Make A Rigid Course Seem A Selfish Indulgence Of His Own Righteousness.

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

My God,' He Gasped, 'you're Fun To Kiss.

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

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.

One Writes Of Scars Healed, A Loose Parallel To The Pathology Of The Skin, But There Is No Such Thing In The Life Of An Individual.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

The Transition From Libertine To Prig Was So Complete.

The Lights Grow Brighter As The Earth Lurches Away From The Sun.

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

She Knew Few Words And Believed In None.

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.

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

So I Walked Away And Left Him Standing There In The Moonlight - Watching Over Nothing.

People Try So Hard To Believe In Leaders Now, Pitifully Hard. But We No Sooner Get A Popular Reformer Or Politician Or Soldier Or Writer Or Philosopher -- A Roosevelt, A Tolstoi, A Wood, A Shaw, A Nietzsche, Than The Cross-currents Of Criticism Wash Him Away. My Lord, No Man Can Stand Prominence These Days. It's The Surest Path To Obscurity. People Get Sick Of Hearing The Same Name Over And Over.

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.

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.

There Was A Kindliness About Intoxication - There Was That Indescribable Gloss And Glamour It Gave, Like The Memories Of Ephemeral And Faded Evenings.

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 Am Too Much A Moralist At Heart, And Really Want To Preach At People In Some Acceptable Form, Rather Than Entertain Them.

Art Isn't Meaningless... It Is In Itself. It Isn't In That It Tries To Make Life Less So.

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

People Disappeared, Reappeared, Made Plans To Go Somewhere, And Then Lost Each Other, Searched For Each Other, Found Each Other A Few Feet Away.

Great Gatsby Book

"if It Wasn’t For The Mist We Could See Your Home Across The Bay," Said Gatsby. "you Always Have A Green Light That Burns At The End Of Your Dock." Daisy Put Her Arm Through His Abruptly But He Seemed Absorbed In What He Had Just Said. Possibly It Had Occurred To Him That The Colossal Significance Of That Light Had Now Vanished Forever. Compared To The Great Distance That Had Separated Him From Daisy It Had Seemed Very Near To Him, Almost Touching Her. It Had Seemed As Close As A Star To The Moon. Now It Was Again A Green Light On A Dock. His Count Of Enchanted Things Had Diminished By One.

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

The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get - Children.

Great Gatsby Book

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Personality Is An Unbroken Series Of Successful Gestures.

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.

Kiss Me Now, Love Me Now.

Wine Gave A Sort Of Gallantry To Their Own Failure.

He Dispensed Starlight To Casual Moths.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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