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It Was A Grey Day, That Least Fleshly Of All Weathers; A Day Of Dreams And Far Hopes And Clear Visions. It Was A Day Easily Associated With Those Abstract Truths And Purities That Dissolve In The Sunshine Or Fade Out In Mocking Laughter By The Light Of The Moon. The Trees And Clouds Were Carved In Classical Severity; The Sounds Of The Countryside Had Harmonized To A Monotone, Metallic As A Trumpet, Breathless As The Grecian Urn.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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It Was A Grey

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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It Was A Grey Day, That Least Fleshly Of All Weathers; A Day Of Dreams And Far Hopes And Clear Visions. It Was A Day Easily Associated With Those Abstract Truths And Purities That Dissolve In The Sunshine Or Fade Out In Mocking Laughter By The Light Of The Moon. The Trees And Clouds Were Carved In Classical Severity; The Sounds Of The Countryside Had Harmonized To A Monotone, Metallic As A Trumpet, Breathless As The Grecian Urn.

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

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But With Every Word She Was Drawing Further And Further Into Herself, So He Gave That Up, And Only The Dead Dream Fought On As The Afternoon Slipped Away, Trying To Touch What Was No Longer Tangible, Struggling Unhappily, Undespairingly, Toward That Lost Voice Across The Room.

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.

Any Person With Any Imagination Is Bound To Be Afraid.

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She’s Got An Indiscreet Voice,” I Remarked. “it’s Full Of-“ I Hesitated. “her Voice Is Full Of Money,” He Said Suddenly. That Was It. I’d Never Understood Before. It Was Full Of Money-that Was The Inexhaustible Charm That Rose And Fell In It, The Jingle Of It, The Cymbals’ Song Of It.

"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.

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

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.

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

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

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Often A Man Can Play The Helpless Child In Front Of A Woman, But He Can Almost Never Bring It Off When He Feels Most Like A Helpless Child.

I Want To Die Violently Instead Of Fading Out Sentimentally.

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.

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.

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

Premature Success Gives One An Almost Mystical Conception Of Destiny As Opposed To Will Power-at Its Worst The Napoleonic Delusion.

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

Youth Is Like Having A Big Plate Of Candy. Sentimentalists Think They Want To Be In The Pure, Simple State They Were In Before They Ate The Candy. They Don't. They Just Want The Fun Of Eating It All Over Again.

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.

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.

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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.

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

She Was A Mischief, And That Was A Satisfaction; No Longer Was She A Huntress Of Corralled Game

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--

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

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

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.

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

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

I Don't Think He Was Ever Happy Unless Someone Was In Love With Him, Responding To Him Like Filings To A Magnet, Helping Him To Explain Himself, Promising Him Something. What It Was I Do Not Know. Perhaps They Promised That There Would Always Be Women In The World Who Would Spend Their Brightest, Freshest, Rarest Hours To Nurse And Protect That Superiority He Cherished In His Heart.

Life Is Essentially A Cheat And Its Conditions Are Those Of Defeat; The Redeeming Things Are Not Happiness And Pleasure But The Deeper Satisfactions That Come Out Of Struggle.

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.

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

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

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

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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.

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The Words Seemed To Bite Physically Into Gatsby.

The Invitation To Miss Myra St. Claire's Bobbing Party Spent The Morning In His Coat Pocket, Where It Had An Intense Physical Affair With A Dusty Piece Of Peanut Brittle.

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

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

A Writer Wastes Nothing.

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

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

Later She Remembered All The Hours Of The Afternoon As Happy -- One Of Those Uneventful Times That Seem At The Moment Only A Link Between Past And Future Pleasure, But Turn Out To Have Been The Pleasure Itself.

If You Spend Your Life Sparing People’s Feelings And Feeding Their Vanity, You Get So You Can’t Distinguish What Should Be Respected In Them.

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She Wanted To Exist Only As A Conscious Flower, Prolonging And Preserving Herself

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

Never Miss A Party...good For The Nerves--like Celery.

The Faces Of Most American Women Over Thirty Are Relief Maps Of Petulant And Bewildered Unhappiness.

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.

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

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.

She Knew Few Words And Believed In None.

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

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

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.

To Most Women Art Is A Form Of Scandal.

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

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. From The Western Half Of The Sky The Sun Was Shying Little Golden Disks At The Sea--if You Gazed Intently Enough You Could See Them Skip From Wave Tip To Wave Tip Until They Joined A Broad Collar Of Golden Coin That Was Collecting Half A Mile Out And Would Eventually Be A Dazzling Sunset.

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

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

Dear, Don't Think Of Getting Out Of Bed Yet. I've Always Suspected That Early Rising In Early Life Makes One Nervous.

Grown Up, And That Is A Terribly Hard Thing To Do. It Is Much Easier To Skip It And Go From One Childhood To Another.

You Don’t Know What A Trial It Is To Be —like Me. I've Got To Keep My Face Like Steel In The Street To Keep Men From Winking At Me.

Action Is Character.

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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.

You Have To Develop A Conscience And If On Top Of That You Have Talent So Much The Better. But If You Have Talent Without Conscience, You Are Just One Of Many Thousand Journalists.

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

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Nothing Is As Obnoxious As Other People's Luck.

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

Great Gatsby Book

Englishmen Must Have An Island.

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

Tender Is The Night

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

The Officer Looked At Daisy While She Was Speaking, In A Way That Every Young Girl Wants To Be Looked At Sometime, And Because It Seemed Romantic To Me I Have Remembered The Incident Ever Since.

What Was The Use Of Doing Great Things If I Could Have A Better Time Telling Her What I Was Going To Do?

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No Grand Idea Was Ever Born In A Conference, But A Lot Of Foolish Ideas Have Died There.

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Beauty Is Only To Be Admired, Only To Be Loved - To Be Harvested Carefully And Then Flung At A Chosen Lover Like A Gift Of Roses. It Seems To Me, So Far As I Can Judge Clearly At All, That My Beauty Would Be Used Like That.

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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.

America Is A Willingness Of The Heart.

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

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

She Was Feeling The Pressure Of The World Outside And She Wanted To See Him And Feel His Presence Beside Her And Be Reassured That She Was Doing The Right Thing After All.

His Dream Must Have Seemed So Close That He Could Hardly Fail To Grasp It. He Did Not Know That It Was Already Behind Him.

They Were Smiling At Each Other As If This Was The Beginning Of The World.

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

This Is What I Think Now: That The Natural State Of The Sentient Adult Is A Qualified Unhappiness.

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.

Every Act Of Life, From The Morning Toothbrush To The Friend At Dinner, Became An Effort. I Hated The Night When I Couldn't Sleep And I Hated The Day Because It Went Toward Night.

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.

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.

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

Celibacy Goes Deeper Than The Flesh.

Sometimes It Is Harder To Deprive Oneself Of A Pain Than Of A Pleasure And The Memory So Possessed Him That For The Moment There Was Nothing To Do But To Pretend.

We All Must Try To Be Good.

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.

In My Younger And More Vulnerable Years My Father Gave Me Some Advice That I've Been Turning Over In My Mind Ever Since.

All She Wanted Was To Be A Little Girl, To Be Efficiently Taken Care Of By Some Yielding Yet Superior Power, Stupider And Steadier Than Herself. It Seemed That The Only Lover She Had Ever Wanted Was A Lover In A Dream

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Even When The East Excited Me Most, Even When I Was Keenly Aware Of Its Superiority To The Broad, Sprawling, Swollen Towns Beyond The Ohio, With Their Interminable Inquisitions Which Only Spared Children And The Very Old-even Then It Had Always For Me A Quality Of Distortion.

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

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

Her Philosophy Is Carpe Diem For Herself And Laissez Faire For Others.

Laissez Faire Capitalism

I Can’t Tell You Just How Wonderful She Is. I Don’t Want You To Know. I Don’t Want Any One To Know.

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

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

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

As He Took Her Hand She Saw Him Look Her Over From Head To Foot, A Gesture She Recognized And That Made Her Feel At Home, But Gave Her Always A Faint Feeling Of Superiority To Whoever Made It. If Her Person Was Property She Could Exercise Whatever Advantage Was Inherent In Its Ownership.

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

Great Gatsby Love

Switzerland Is A Country Where Very Few Things Begin, But Many Things End.

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

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

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

People Living Alone Get Used To Loneliness.

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

Great Gatsby Book

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

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

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

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

I'm Not Much Like Myself Any More.

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

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.

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.

What Do You Think Of That? It’s Stopped Raining." I’m Glad Jay." Her Throat, Full Of Aching, Grieving Beauty, Told Only Of Her Unexpected Joy.

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.

Many Nights He Lay There Dreaming Awake Of Secret Cafés In Mont Marte, Where Ivory Women Delved In Romantic Mysteries With Diplomats And Soldiers Of Fortune, While Orchestras Played Hungarian Waltzes And The Air Was Thick And Exotic With Intrigue And Moonlight And Adventure.

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

Tender Is The Night

There Are All Kinds Of Love In This World But Never The Same Love Twice.

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.

For Years Afterwards When Amory Thought Of Eleanor He Seemed Still To Hear The Wind Sobbing Around Him And Sending Little Chills Into The Places Beside His Heart. The Night When They Rode Up The Slope And Watched The Cold Moon Float Through The Clouds, He Lost A Further Part Of Him That Nothing Could Restore; And When He Lost It He Lost Also The Power Of Regretting It.

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