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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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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One Hurries Through, Even

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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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.

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That Voice Was A Deathless Song.

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

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

There’s A Writer For You,” He Said. “knows Everything And At The Same Time He Knows Nothing.” [narrator]it Was My First Inkling That He Was A Writer. And While I Like Writers—because If You Ask A Writer Anything You Usually Get An Answer—still It Belittled Him In My Eyes. Writers Aren’t People Exactly. Or, If They’re Any Good, They’re A Whole Lot Of People Trying So Hard To Be One Person. It’s Like Actors, Who Try So Pathetically Not To Look In Mirrors. Who Lean Backward Trying—only To See Their Faces In The Reflecting Chandeliers.

You Are The Loveliest Thing That I Have Ever Known.

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

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.

Unloved Women Have No Biographies-- They Have Histories

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.

The Notion Of Sitting Down And Conjuring Up, Not Only Words In Which To Clothe Thoughts But Thoughts Worthy Of Being Clothed--the Whole Thing Was Absurdly Beyond His Desires.

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

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.

She Was A Dark, Unenduring Little Flower - Yet He Thought He Detected In Her Some Quality Of Spiritual Reticence, Of Strength Drawn From Her Passive Acceptance Of All Things. In This He Was Mistaken.

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 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.

Amory: I Love You. Rosalind: I Love You- Now.

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

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.

I Fell In Love With Her Courage, Her Sincerity, And Her Flaming Self Respect. And It's These Things I'd Believe In, Even If The Whole World Indulged In Wild Suspicions That She Wasn't All She Should Be. I Love Her And It Is The Beginning Of Everything.

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

Lie To Me By The Moonlight. Do A Fabulous Story.

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

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.

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

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.

Murder Your Darlings.

Her Voice Is Full Of Money.

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

Don't Forget Who You Are And Where You Come From.

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

Beware The Artist Who's An Intellectual Also. The Artist Who Doesn't Fit.

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 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

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.

Beautiful Things Grow To A Certain Height And Then They Fail And Fade Off, Breathing Out Memories As They Decay.

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

Experience Is Not Worth The Getting. It's Not A Thing That Happens Pleasantly To A Passive You--it's A Wall That An Active You Runs Up Against.

Every Author Ought To Write Every Book As If He Were Going To Be Beheaded The Day He Finished It.

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.

When The Lightning Strikes One Of Us, It Strikes Both

There Are No Second Acts In American Lives.

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

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.

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

Once In A While I Go Off On A Spree And Make A Fool Of Myself, But I Always Come Back, And In My Heart I Love Her All The Time. - The Great Gatsby.

Great Gatsby Love

He Wanted To Care, And He Could Not Care. For He Had Gone Away And He Could Never Go Back Anymore. The Gates Were Closed, The Sun Was Down, And There Was No Beauty Left But The Gray Beauty Of Steel That Withstands All Time. Even The Grief He Could Have Borne Was Left Behind In The Country Of Youth, Of Illusion, Of The Richness Of Life, Where His Winter Dreams Had Flourished.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Situations In Life

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

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.

Boredom Is Not An End-product, Is Comparatively Rather An Early Stage In Life And Art. You've Got To Go By Or Past Or Through Boredom, As Through A Filter, Before The Clear Product Emerges.

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.

The Hangover Became A Part Of The Day As Well Allowed-for As The Spanish Siesta.

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

Great Gatsby Love

You Are Mine-you Know You're Mine!" He Cried Wildly...the Moonlight Twisted In Through The Vines And Listened...the Fireflies Hung Upon Their Whispers As If To Win His Glance From The Glory Of Their Eyes.

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.

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.

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

It Was Only A Sunny Smile, And Little It Cost In The Giving, But Like Morning Light It Scattered The Night And Made The Day Worth Living.

Want Any Of This Stuff? Jordan?... Nick?" I Didn't Answer. Nick?" He Asked Again. What?" Want Any?" No... I Just Remembered That Today's My Birthday." I Was Thirty. Before Me Stretched The Portentous, Menacing Road Of A New Decade.

A Squalid Phantasmagoria Of Breath

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.

Vitality Shows In Not Only The Ability To Persist But The Ability To Start Over.

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.

It Takes A Genius To Whine Appealingly.

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

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

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

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

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.

Of All Natural Forces, Vitality Is The Incommunicable One. . . . Vitality Never "takes." You Have It Or You Haven't It, Like Health Or Brown Eyes Or A Baritone Voice.

I'm Merely Trying To Give You The Sort Of Argument That Would Appeal To Your Intelligence.

Women Are Necessarily Capable Of Almost Anything In Their Struggle For Survival And Can Scarcely Be Convicted Of Such Man-made Crimes As “cruelty.

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.

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

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.

You're Not Sorry To Go, Of Course. With People Like Us Our Home Is Where We Are Not... No One Person In The World Is Necessary To You Or To Me.

Life Plays The Same Lovely And Agonizing Joke On All Of Us.

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

To Have Something To Say Is A Question Of Sleepless Nights And Worry And Endless Ratiocination Of Subject - Of Endless Trying To Dig Out The Essential Truth, The Essential Justice. As A First Premise You Have To Develop A Conscience And If On Top Of That You Have Talent So Much The Better. But If You Have Talent Without The Conscience, You Are Just One Of Many Thousands Of Journalists.

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

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

The Sign Of Intelligence Is The Ability To Carry Opposed Thoughts At The Same Time.

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.

It Is Invariably Saddening To Look Through New Eyes At Things Upon Which You Have Expended Your Own Powers Of Adjustment.

Great Gatsby Important

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

Don't Be So Anxious About It,' She Laughed. 'i'm Not Used To Being Loved. I Wouldn't Know What To Do; I Never Got The Trick Of It.' She Looked Down At Him, Shy And Fatigued. 'so Here We Are. I Told You Years Ago That I Had The Makings Of Cinderella.' He Took Her Hand; She Drew It Back Instinctively And Then Replaced It In His. 'beg Your Pardon. Not Even Used To Being Touched. But I'm Not Afraid Of You, If You Stay Quiet And Don't Move Suddenly.

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

Great Gatsby Nick

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.

Gatsby Believed In The Green Light, The Orgastic Future That Year By Year Recedes Before Us. It Eluded Us Then, But That's No Matter - To-morrow We Will Run Faster, Stretch Out Our Arms Farther ... And One Fine Morning ---

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

There Was Even A Recurrent Idea In America About An Education That Would Leave Out History And The Past, That Should Be A Sort Of Equipment For Aerial Adventure, Weighed Down By None Of The Stowaways Of Inheritance Or Tradition.

His Hand Took Hold Of Hers, And As She Said Something Low In His Ear He Turned Toward Her With A Rush Of Emotion. I Think That Voice Held Him Most, With Its Fluctuating, Feverish Warmth, Because It Couldn’t Be Over-dreamed —that Voice Was A Deathless Song.

It's A Mining Town In Lotus Land.

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

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.

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

I Might Have Enjoyed The Company Of A Woman Or Two... Or Three But That Had Never Stopped Me From Loving You.

Never Befuddle A Solitary Thrashing With A Last Annihilation.

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--

It Isn't Given To Us To Know Those Rare Moments When People Are Wide Open And The Lightest Touch Can Wither Or Heal. A Moment Too Late And We Can Never Reach Them Any More In This World. They Will Not Be Cured By Our Most Efficacious Drugs Or Slain With Our Sharpest Swords.

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

You've Got An Awfully Kissable Mouth.

To Be Kind Is More Important Than To Be Right. Many Times, What People Need Is Not A Brilliant Mind That Speaks But A Special Heart That Listens.

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

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

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.

Once A Change Of Direction Has Begun, Even Though It's The Wrong One, It Still Tends To Clothe Itself As Thoroughly In The Appurtenances Of Tightness As If It Had Been A Natural All Along.

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

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.

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

And Yale Is November, Crisp And Energetic.

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.

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

There Must Have Been Moments Even That Afternoon When Daisy Tumbled Short Of His Dreams -- Not Through Her Own Fault, But Because Of The Colossal Vitality Of His Illusion. It Had Gone Beyond Her, Beyond Everything. He Had Thrown Himself Into It With A Creative Passion, Adding To It All The Time, Decking It Out With Every Bright Feather That Drifted His Way. No Amount Of Fire Or Freshness Can Challenge What A Man Will Store Up In His Ghostly Heart.

I Am Still A Little Afraid Of Missing Something If I Forget That, As My Father Snobbishly Suggested, And I Snobbishly Repeat, A Sense Of The Fundamental Decencies Is Parcelled Out Unequally At Birth.

The Words Seemed To Bite Physically Into Gatsby.

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.

Everything That Begins, Begins With Blood.

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

To Most Women Art Is A Form Of Scandal.

Nothing Any Good Isn't Hard.

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.

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

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

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.

She Was Dazzling-- Alight; It Was Agony To Comprehend Her Beauty In A Glance.

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

Laissez Faire Capitalism

Now The Standard Cure For One Who Is Sunk Is To Consider Those In Actual Destitution Or Physical Suffering—this Is An All-weather Beatitude For Gloom In General And Fairly Salutary Day-time Advice For Everyone. But At Three O’clock In The Morning, A Forgotten Package Has The Same Tragic Importance As A Death Sentence, And The Cure Doesn’t Work—and In A Real Dark Night Of The Soul It Is Always Three O’clock In The Morning, Day After Day.

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

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!

For A Transitory Enchanted Moment Man Must Have Held His Breath In The Presence Of This Continent, Compelled Into An Aesthetic Contemplation He Neither Understood Nor Desired, Face To Face For The Last Time In History With Something Commensurate To His Capacity For Wonder.

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.

Almost Everybody Can Be Imagined As Either A Cat Or A Dog.

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

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

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

Shakespeare--whetting, Frustrating, Surprising And Gratifying.

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

The Easiest Way To Get A Reputation Is To Go Outside The Fold, Shout Around For A Few Years As A Violent Atheist Or A Dangerous Radical, And Then Crawl Back To The Shelter.

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.

Once One Is Caught Up Into The Material World Not One Person In Ten Thousand Finds The Time To Form Literary Taste, To Examine The Validity Of Philosophic Concepts For Himself, Or To Form What, For Lack Of A Better Phrase, I Might Call The Wise And Tragic Sense Of Life.

If I Knew Words Enough, I Could Write The Longest Love Letter In The World And Never Get Tired

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's A Great Advantage Not To Drink Among Hard-drinking People. You Can Hold Your Tongue, And, Moreover, You Can Time Any Little Irregularity Of Your Own So That Everybody Else Is So Blind That They Don't See Or Care.

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.

I Was Too Absorbed To Be Responsive

Though The Jazz Age Continued It Became Less And Less An Affair Of Youth. The Sequel Was Like A Children's Party Taken Over By The Elders.

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

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.

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.

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

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

For A Moment The Last Sunshine Fell With Romantic Affection Upon Her Glowing Face; Her Voice Compelled Me Forward Breathlessly As I Listened - Then The Glow Faded, Each Light Deserting Her With Lingering Regret, Like Children Leaving A Pleasant Street At Dusk.

You Remind Me Of A Smoked Cigarette.

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.

So He Waited, Listening For A Moment Longer To The Tuning-fork That Had Been Struck Upon A Star.

A Woman Should Be Able To Kiss A Man Beautifully And Romantically Without Any Desire To Be Either His Wife Or His Mistress.

It Takes Two To Make An Accident.

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

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

I'm In A Muddle About A Lot Of Things -- I've Just Discovered That I've A Mind, And I'm Starting To Read" "read What?" "everything. I Have To Pick And Choose, Of Course, But Mostly Things That Make Me Think.

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.

Of Course All Life Is A Process Of Breaking Down, But The Blows That Do The Dramatic Side Of The Work-- The Big Sudden Blows That Come, Or Seem To Come, From Outside-- The Ones You Remember And Blame Things On And, In Moments Of Weakness, Tell Your Friends About, Don't Show Their Effect All At Once. There Is Another Sort Of Blow That Comes From Within-that You Don't Feel Until It's Too Late To Do Anything About It, Until You Realize With Finality That In Some Regard You Will Never Be As Good A Man Again.

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.

Very Strong Personalities Must Confine Themselves In Mutual Conversation To Very Gentle Subjects.

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.

No Decent Career Was Ever Founded On A Public.

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.

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!

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

And Will I Like Being Called A Jazz-baby? You Will Love It.

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.

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

Any Person With Any Imagination Is Bound To Be Afraid.

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.

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

There Used To Be Two Kinds Of Kisses: First When Girls Were Kissed And Deserted; Second, When They Were Engaged. Now There's A Third Kind, Where The Man Is Kissed And Deserted. If Mr. Jones Of The Nineties Bragged He'd Kissed A Girl, Everyone Knew He Was Through With Her. If Mr. Jones Of 1919 Brags The Same, Everyone Knows It's Because He Can't Kiss Her Any More. Given A Decent Start Any Girl Can Beat A Man Nowadays.

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.

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

He Found What A Grotesque Thing A Rose Is And How Raw The Sunlight Was Upon The Scarcely Created Grass.

Great Gatsby American Dream

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.

Often I Think Writing Is A Sheer Paring Away Of Oneself Leaving Always Something Thinner, Barer, More Meagre.

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.

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.

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

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

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

It Understood You Just As Far As You Wanted To Be Understood, Believed In You As You Would Like To Believe In Yourself, And Assured You That It Had Precisely The Impression Of You That, At Your Best, You Hoped To Convey.

Great Gatsby Book

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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Kenneth R. Miller

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