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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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I Was Rather Literary

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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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.

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

Great Gatsby Love

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

Great Gatsby Important

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

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

Rosemary Felt That This Swim Would Become The Typical One Of Her Life, The One That Would Always Pop Up In Her Memory At The Mention Of Swimming.

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

I Was Too Absorbed To Be Responsive

The Years Between Thirty-five And Sixty-five Revolve Before The Passive Mind As One Unexplained, Confusing Merry-go-round. True, They Are A Merry-go-round Of Ill-gaited And Wind-broken Horses, Painted First In Pastel Colors, Then In Dull Grays And Browns, But Perplexing And Intolerably Dizzy The Thing Is, As Never Were The Merry-go-rounds Of Childhood Or Adolescence; As Never, Surely, Were The Certain-coursed, Dynamic Roller-coasters Of Youth. For Most Men And Women These Thirty Years Are Taken Up With A Gradual Withdrawal From Life.

I Was A Little Shocked At The Elaborateness Of The Lie.

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

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.

"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.

Little Montenegro! He Lifted Up The Words And Nodded At Them-with His Smile. The Smile Comprehended Montenegro’s Troubled History And Sympathized With The Brave Struggles Of The Montenegrin People. It Appreciated Fully The Chain Of National Circumstances, Which Had Elicited This Tribute From Montenegro’s Warm Little Heart. My Incredulity Was Submerged In Fascination Now; It Was Like Skimming Hastily Through A Dozen Magazines.

But You Can Love More Than Just One Person, Can't You?

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.

Life Cracked Like Ice!

She Laughed With Thrilling Scorn. "sophisticated-god, I'm Sophisticated!

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.

Sometimes I Don't Know Whether I'm Real Or Whether I'm A Character In One Of My Novels.

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.

You Can’t Repeat The Past.” “can’t Repeat The Past?” He Cried Incredulously. “why Of Course You Can!

Great Gatsby Love

Great Gatsby American Dream

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

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

The Words Seemed To Bite Physically Into Gatsby.

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.

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

Praise The Power That Hath Made And Preserved Us A Nation. Then Conquer We Must, For Our Cause It Is Just, And This Be Our Motto: "in God Is Our Trust." And The Star-spangled Banner Forever Shall Wave O'er The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave!

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.

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

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

Blessed Are The Dead That The Rain Falls On.

Having Once Found The Intensity Of Art, Nothing Else That Can Happen In Life Can Ever Again Seem As Important As The Creative Process.

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

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

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.

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.

Nobody Ever Became A Writer Just By Wanting To Be One.

Genius Is The Ability To Put Into Effect What Is On Your Mind.

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 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.

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

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

Things Are Sweeter When They're Lost. I Know--because Once I Wanted Something And Got It. It Was The Only Thing I Ever Wanted Badly, Dot, And When I Got It It Turned To Dust In My Hand.

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

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

And In The End, We Were All Just Humans...drunk On The Idea That Love, Only Love, Could Heal Our Brokenness.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I Began To Like New York, The Racy, Adventurous Feel Of It At Night, And The Satisfaction That The Constant Flicker Of Men And Women And Machines Gives To The Restless Eye.

If You Are Strong Enough, There Are No Precedents.

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

They Were Stars On This Stage, Each Playing To An Audience Of Two.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Look At That,' She Whispered, And Then After A Moment: 'i'd Like To Just Get One Of Those Pink Clouds And Put You In It And Push You Around.

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

Great Gatsby American Dream

Shakespeare--whetting, Frustrating, Surprising And Gratifying.

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.

Well, You Never Knew Exactly How Much Space You Occupied In People's Lives. Yet From This Fog His Affection Emerged--the Best Contacts Are When One Knows The Obstacles And Still Wants To Preserve A Relation.

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

Happiness Is The Relief After Extreme Tension

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

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

Baseball Is A Game Played By Idiots For Morons.

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

And After Reading Thoreau I Felt How Much I Have Lost By Leaving Nature Out Of My Life.

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.

A Sense Of Responsibility Would Spoil Her. She's Too Pretty.

Sense Of Responsibility

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.

Her Grey, Sun-strained Eyes Stared Straight Ahead, But She Had Deliberately Shifted Our Relations, And For A Moment I Thought I Loved Her. But I Am Slow-thinking And Full Of Interior Rules That Act As Brakes On My Desires, And I Knew That First I Had To Get Myself Definitely Out Of That Tangle Back Home.

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

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

Knowing Nothing

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I'll Drink Your Champagne. I'll Drink Every Drop Of It, I Don't Care If It Kills Me.

What'll We Do With Ourselves This Afternoon,' Cried Daisy, 'and The Day After That, And The Next Thirty Years?' 'don't Be Morbid,' Jordan Said. 'life Starts All Over Again When It Gets Crisp In The Fall.' 'but It's So Hot,' Insisted Daisy, On The Verge Of Tears, 'and Everything's So Confused. Let's All Go To Town!

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.

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

We All Have Souls Of Different Ages

I Must Hold In Balance The Sense Of The Futility Of Effort And The Sense Of The Necessity To Struggle; The Conviction Of The Inevitability Of Failure And Still The Determination To 'succeed'-and, More Than These, The Contradiction Between The Dead Hand Of The Past And The High Intentions Of The Future. If I Could Do This Through The Common Ills-domestic, Professional And Personal-then The Ego Would Continue As An Arrow Shot From Nothingness To Nothingness With Such Force That Only Gravity Would Bring It To Earth At Last.

The 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.

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.

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.

I Have Asked A Lot Of My Emotions-one Hundred And Twenty Stories. The Price Was High, Right Up With Kipling, Because There Was One Little Drop Of Something, Not Blood, Not A Tear, Not My Seed, But Me More Intimately Than These, In Every Story, It Was The Extra I Had. Now It Has Gone And I Am Just Like You Now.

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.

An Unread Book Is Just A Block Of Paper.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Tender Is The Night

It's A Mining Town In Lotus Land.

I Wish I Could Write. I Get These Ideas But I Never Seem To Be Able To Put Them In Words.

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.

Never Confuse A Single Defeat With A Final Defeat.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Tireless Passion, Fierce Jealousy, Longing To Possess And Crush-these Alone Were Left Of All His Love For Rosalind; These Remained To Him As Payment For The Loss Of His Youth-bitter Calomel Under The Thin Sugar Of Love's Exaltation.

Conditions In The [movie] Industry Somehow Propose The Paradox: "we Brought You Here For Your Individuality But While You're Here We Insist That You Do Everything To Conceal It.

I Want To Die Violently Instead Of Fading Out Sentimentally.

At The Enchanted Metropolitan Twilight I Felt A Haunting Loneliness Sometimes, And Felt It In Others -- Poor Young Clerks Who Loitered In Front Of Windows Waiting Until It Was Time For A Solitary Restaurant Dinner -- Young Clerks In The Dusk, Wasting The Most Poignant Moments Of Night And Life.

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.

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.

The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get - Children.

Great Gatsby Book

Reserving Judgements Is A Matter Of Infinite Hope.

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

Great Gatsby Love

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

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

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

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.

But His Heart Was In A Constant, Turbulent Riot.

I Want Leisure To Read—an Immense Amount.

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

Great Gatsby Love

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Work Like Hell! I Had 122 Rejection Slips Before I Sold A Story.

Genius Goes Around The World In Its Youth Incessantly Apologizing For Having Large Feet. What Wonder That Later In Life It Should Be Inclined To Raise Those Feet Too Swiftly To Fools And Bores.

And That Taught Me You Can't Have Anything, You Can't Have Anything At All. Because Desire Just Cheats You. It's Like A Sunbeam Skipping Here And There About A Room. It Stops And Gilds Some Inconsequential Object, And We Poor Fools Try To Grasp It - But When We Do The Sunbeam Moves On To Something Else, And You've Got The Inconsequential Part, But The Glitter That Made You Want It Is Gone.

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.

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.

We All Must Try To Be Good.

Laughter Is Easier Minute By Minute, Spilled With Prodigality, Tipped Out At A Cheerful Word.

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.

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.

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

It Was About Then [1920] That I Wrote A Line Which Certain People Will Not Let Me Forget: "she Was A Faded But Still Lovely Woman Of Twenty-seven."

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.

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.

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

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 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

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.

You're The Only Girl I've Seen For A Long Time That Actually Did Look Like Something Blooming.

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 Two Basic Stories Of All Times Are Cinderella And Jack The Giant Killer-the Charm Of Women And The Courage Of Men.

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.

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

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.

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.

Forgotten Is Forgiven.

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

Modern Life... Changes No Longer Century By Century, But Year By Year, Ten Times Faster Than It Ever Has Before-populations Doubling, Civilizations Unified More Closely With Other Civilizations, Economic Interdependence, Racial Questions, And-we're Dawdling Along. My Idea Is That We've Got To Go Very Much Faster.

His Heart Beat Faster And Faster As Daisy’s White Face Came Up To His Own. 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. So He Waited, Listening For A Moment Longer To The Tuning Fork That Had Been Struck Upon A Star. Then He Kissed Her. At His Lips’ Touch She Blossomed Like A Flower And The Incarnation Was Complete.

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

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

Great Gatsby Book

Begin With An Individual, And Before You Know It You Find That You Have Created A Type; Begin With A Type, And You Find That You Have Created - Nothing.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Human Sympathy Has Its Limits.

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

She Knew Few Words And Believed In None.

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.

You Remind Me Of A Smoked Cigarette.

Love Is Fragile -- She Was Thinking -- But Perhaps The Pieces Are Saved, The Things That Hovered On Lips, That Might Have Been Said. The New Love-words, The Tenderness Learned, And Treasured Up For The Next Lover.

My Latest Tendency Is To Collapse About 11:00 And With The Tears Flowing From My Eyes Or The Gin Rising To Their Level And Leaking Over, And Tell Interested Friends Or Acquaintances That I Haven't A Friend In The World And Likewise Care For Nobody.

This Unlikely Story Begins On A Sea That Was A Blue Dream, As Colorful As Blue-silk Stockings, And Beneath A Sky As Blue As The Irises Of Children's Eyes.

Here's To Alcohol, The Rose Colored Glasses Of Life.

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.

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

He Talked A Lot About The Past, And I Gathered That He Wanted To Recover Something, Some Idea Of Himself Perhaps, That Had Gone Into Loving Daisy. His Life Had Been Confused And Disordered Since Then, But If He Could Once Return To A Certain Starting Place And Go Over It All Slowly, He Could Find Out What That Thing Was.

I Want To Do Everything In The World With You.

You Seem To Take Things So Personally, Hating People And Worshipping Them--always Thinking People Are So Important--especially Yourselves. You Just Ask To Be Kicked Around. I Like People And I Like Them To Like Me, But I Wear My Heart Where God Put It--on The Inside.

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