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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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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So There Was Not

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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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.

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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.

He Had Been Full Of The Idea So Long, Dreamed It Right Through To The End, Waited With His Teeth Set, So To Speak, At An Inconceivable Pitch Of Intensity. Now, In The Reaction, He Was Running Down Like An Overwound Clock.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Rich Are Different From Us.

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

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.

The Best Contacts Are When One Knows The Obstacles And Still Wants To Preserve A Relation.

Tender Is The Night

Any Person With Any Imagination Is Bound To Be Afraid.

We Haven’t Met For Many Years, Said Daisy, Her Voice As Matter-of-fact As It Could Ever Be. "five Years Next November." The Automatic Quality Set Us All Back At Least Another Minute.

It Was One Of Those Rare Smiles With A Quality Of Eternal Reassurance In It, That You May Come Across Four Or Five Times In Life.

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

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

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

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

Great Gatsby Love

I Learned A Little Of Beauty - Enough To Know That It Had Nothing To Do With Truth - And I Found, Moreover, That There Was No Great Literary Tradition; There Was Only The Tradition Of The Eventful Death Of Every Literary Tradition.

He Was Handsome Then If Never Before, Bound For One Of Those Immortal Moments Which Come So Radiantly That Their Remembered Light Is Enough To See By For Years.

What Was It Up There In The Song That Seemed To Be Calling Her Back Inside? What Would Happen Now In The Dim, Incalculable Hours?

I Was Enjoying Myself Now. I Had Taken Two Finger Bowls Of Champagne And The Scene Had Changed Before My Eyes Into Something Significant, Elemental And Profound.

Sometimes I Wish I'd Been An Englishman; American Life Is So Damned Dumb And Stupid And Healthy

Most People Think Everybody Feels About Them Much More Violently Than They Actually Do; They Think Other People's Opinions Of Them Swing Through Great Arcs Of Approval Or Disapproval.

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.

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

An Artist Is Someone Who Can Hold Two Opposing Viewpoints And Still Remain Fully Functional.

I Never Noticed The Stars Before. I Always Thought Of Them As Great Big Diamonds That Belonged To Some One. Now They Frighten Me. They Make Me Feel That It Was All A Dream, All My Youth.

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.

The First Lights Of The Evening Were Springing Into Pale Existence. The Ferris Wheel, Pricked Out Now In Lights, Revolved Leisurely Through The Dusk; A Few Empty Cars Of The Roller Coaster Rattled Overhead.

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

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

Character Is Plot, Plot Is Character.

I See You're Looking At My Cuff Buttons." I Hadn't Been Looking At Them, But I Did Now.

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

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

Tender Is The Night

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

Then, As Though It Had Been Waiting On A Near By Roof For Their Arrival, The Moon Came Slanting Suddenly Through The Vines And Turned The Girl's Face The Color Of White Roses.

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.

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.

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

Knowing Nothing

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

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.

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

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.

Think How You Love Me,' She Whispered. 'i Don't Ask You To Love Me Always Like This, But I Ask You To Remember.' You'll Always Be Like This To Me.' Oh No; But Promise Me You'll Remember.' Her Tears Were Falling. 'i'll Be Different, But Somewhere Lost Inside Me There'll Always Be The Person I Am Tonight.

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

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

The Greatest Profound Pain Is Cased By, And Is The Result Of Our Own Illusions, Fantasies And Dreams.

There Are No Second Acts In American Lives.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Was Haunted Always By My Other Life-my Drab Room In The Bronx, My Square Foot Of The Subway, My Fixation Upon The Day's Letter From Alabama-would It Come And What Would It Say?-my Shabby Suits, My Poverty, And Love. While My Friends Were Launching Decently Into Life I Had Muscled My Inadequate Bark Into Midstream... I Was A Failure-mediocre At Advertising Work And Unable To Get Started As A Writer. Hating The City, I Got Roaring, Weeping Drunk On My Last Penny And Went Home.

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.

All I Think Of Ever Is That I Love You.

To Create Souls In Men, To Create Fine Happiness And Fine Despair She Must Remain Deeply Proud - Proud To Be Inviolate, Proud Also To Be Melting, To Be Passionate And Possessed.

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

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

Everything That Begins, Begins With Blood.

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.

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

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--

Intelligence Is A Mere Instrument Of Circumstances.

The Bottle Of Whiskey - The Second One - Was Now In Constant Demand By All Present, Excepting Catherine, Who 'felt Just As Good On Nothing At All.

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

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.

Talk English To Me, Tommy. Parlez Francais Avec Moi, Nicole. But The Meanings Are Different-- In French You Can Be Heroic And Gallant With Dignity, And You Know It. But In English You Can't Be Heroic And Gallant Without Being A Little Absurd, And You Know That Too. That Gives Me An Advantage.

It's A Mining Town In Lotus Land.

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

I've Given Parties That Have Made Indian Rajahs Green With Envy. I've Had Prima Donnas Break $10,000 Engagements To Come To My Smallest Dinners. When You Were Still Playing Button Back In Ohio, I Entertained On A Cruising Trip That Was So Much Fun That I Had To Sink My Yacht To Make My Guests Go Home.

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

Great Gatsby Important

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

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

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

Human Sympathy Has Its Limits, And We Were Contented To Let All Their Tragic Arguments Fade With The City Lights Behind.

Nothing Is As Obnoxious As Other People's Luck.

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

There Are Only The Pursued, The Pursuing, The Busy And The Tired.

Great Gatsby American Dream

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

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

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

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

Amory Thought How It Was Only The Past That Seemed Strange And Unbelievable.

No Decent Career Was Ever Founded On A Public.

I Don’t Want Just Words. If That’s All You Have For Me, You’d Better Go

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

Great Gatsby American Dream

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

Find The Key Emotion; This May Be All You Need Know To Find Your Short Story.

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."

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

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.

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

Very Few Of The People Who Accentuate The Futility Of Life Remark The Futility Of Themselves. Perhaps They Think That In Proclaiming The Evil Of Living They Somehow Salvage Their Own Worth From The Ruin - But They Don't, Even You And I.

Futility Of Life

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

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

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.

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.

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

There Was No God In His Heart, He Knew; His Ideas Were Still In Riot; There Was Ever The Pain Of Memory; The Regret For His Lost Youth-yet The Waters Of Disillusion Had Left A Deposit On His Soul, Responsibility And A Love Of Life, The Faint Stirring Of Old Ambitions And Unrealized Dreams...... And He Could Not Tell Why The Struggle Was Worth While, Why He Had Determined To Use To 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 Unwelcome November Rain Had Perversely Stolen The Day's Last Hour And Pawned It With That Ancient Fence, The Night.

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

Sometimes It Is Harder To Deprive Oneself Of A Pain Than Of A Pleasure.

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

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

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

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

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

Great Gatsby American Dream

Great Gatsby Book

Great Gatsby Important

The Truth Was That Jay Gatsby, Of West Egg, Long Island, Sprang From His Platonic Conception Of Himself. He Was A Son Of God—a Phrase Which, If It Means Anything, Means Just That—and He Must Be About His Father’s Business, The Service Of A Vast, Vulgar And Meretricious Beauty.

He Found Himself Remembering How On One Summer Morning They Two Had Started From New York In Search Of Happiness. They Had Never Expected To Find It, Perhaps, Yet In Itself That Quest Had Been Happier Than Anything He Expected Forevermore. Life, It Seemed, Must Be A Setting Up Of Props Around One - Otherwise It Was Disaster. There Was No Rest, No Quiet. He Had Been Futile In Longing To Drift And Dream, No One Drifted Except To Maelstroms, No One Dreamed, Without His Dreams Becoming Fantastic Nightmares Of Indecision And Regret.

The Afternoon Had Made Them Tranquil For A While, As If To Give Them A Deep Memory For The Long Parting The Next Day Promised.

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.

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.

I Want Leisure To Read—an Immense Amount.

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

I 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.

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!

No One Should Live Beyond 30.

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

Life Is Progressive, No Matter What Our Intentions.

A New World, Material Without Being Real, Where Poor Ghosts, Breathing Dreams Like Air, Drifted Fortuitously About.

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

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 Must Have Felt That He Had Lost The Old Warm World, Paid A High Price For Living Too Long With A Single Dream. He Must Have Looked Up At An Unfamiliar Sky Through Frightening Leaves And Shivered As He Found What A Grotesque Thing A Rose Is And How Raw The Sunlight Was Upon The Scarcely Created Grass. A New World, Material Without Being Real, Where Poor Ghosts, Breathing Dreams Like Air, Drifted Fortuitously About...like That Ashen, Fantastic Figure Gliding Toward Him Through The Amorphous Trees.

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.

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

How Strange To Have Failed As A Social Creature—even Criminals Do Not Fail That Way—they Are The Law's "loyal Opposition," So To Speak. But The Insane Are Always Mere Guests On Earth, Eternal Strangers Carrying Around Broken Decalogues That They Cannot Read.

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.

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

She Looked At Me And Laughed Pointlessly. Then She Flounced Over To The Dog, Kissed It With Ecstasy, And Swept Into The Kitchen, Implying That A Dozen Chefs Awaited Her Orders There.

The Transition From Libertine To Prig Was So Complete.

They Had Never Been Closer In Their Month Of Love, Nor Communicated More Profoundly One With Another, Than When She Brushed Silent Lips Against His Coat's Shoulder Or When He Touched The End Of Her Fingers, Gently, As Though She Were Asleep.

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.

I Am A Woman And My Business Is To Hold Things Together. My Business Is To Tear Them Apart.

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

For What It's Worth, It's Never Too Late To Be Whoever You Want To Be. I Hope You Live A Life You're Proud Of And If You Find That You're Not, I Hope You Have The Strength To Start Over.

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

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.

Her Beautiful Eyes And Lips Were Very Grave As She Made Her Choice, And Anthony Thought Again How Naive Was Her Every Gesture; She Took All The Things Of Life For Hers To Choose From And Apportion, As Though She Were Continually Picking Out Presents For Herself From An Inexhaustible Counter.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

One Girl Can Be Pretty - But A Dozen Are Only A Chorus.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Writing Is Eternal, For Therein The Dead Heart Liveth, The Clay-cold Tongue Is Eloquent, And The Quick Eye Of The Reader Is Cleared By The Reed Of The Scribe. As A Fossil In The Rock, Or A Coin In The Mortar Of A Ruin, So The Symbolled Thoughts Tell Of A Departed Soul: The Plastic Hand Hath Its Witness In A Statue, And Exactitude Of Vision In A Picture, And So, The Mind, That Was Among Us, In Its Writings Is Embalmed.

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.

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

If You're In Love It Ought To Make You Happy. You Ought To Laugh.

This Is The Beauty I Want. Beauty Has Got To Be Astonishing, Astounding-- It's Got To Burst In On You Like A Dream, Like The Exquisite Eyes Of A Girl.

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

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

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.

He Hadn’t Once Ceased Looking At Daisy, And I Think He Revalued Everything In His House According To The Measure Of Response It Drew From Her Well-loved Eyes. Sometimes, Too, He Stared Around At His Possessions In A Dazed Way, As Though In Her Actual And Astounding Presence None Of It Was Any Longer Real.

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

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

Nothing Any Good Isn't Hard.

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

Happiness Is The Relief After Extreme Tension

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

Baseball Is A Game Played By Idiots For Morons.

You Can Take Hollywood For Granted Like I Did, Or You Can Dismiss It With The Contempt We Reserve For What We Don't Understand. It Can Be Understood Too, But Only Dimly And In Flashes. Not Half A Dozen Men Have Ever Been Able To Keep The Whole Equation Of Pictures In Their Heads.

He's Sensitive And I Don't Want Him To Break His Heart Over Somebody Who Doesn't Care About Him.

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

He Used To Think That He Wanted To Be Good, He Wanted To Be Kind, He Wanted To Be Brave And Wise, But It Was All Pretty Difficult. He Wanted To Be Loved, Too, If He Could Fit It In.

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

Forgotten Is Forgiven.

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

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.

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.

That Voice Was A Deathless Song.

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.

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.

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

Great Gatsby Important

Every One Suspects Himself Of At Least One Of The Cardinal Virtues, And This Is Mine: I Am One Of The Few Honest People That I Have Ever Known.

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

Great Gatsby American Dream

You Are The Loveliest Thing That I Have Ever Known.

Egyptian Proverb: The Worst Things: To Be In Bed And Sleep Not, To Want For One Who Comes Not, To Try To Please And Please Not.

The Early Twenties When We Drank Wood Alcohol And Every Day In Every Way Grew Better And Better, And There Was A First Abortive Shortening Of The Skirts, And Girls All Looked Alike In Sweater Dresses, And People You Didn't Want To Know Said "yes, We Have No Bananas," And It Seemed Only A Question Of A Few Years Before The Older People Would Step Aside And Let The World Be Run By Those Who Saw Things As They Were--and It All Seems Rosy And Romantic To Us Who Were Young Then, Because We Will Never Feel Quite So Intensely About Our Surroundings Any More.

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

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!

He Smiled Understandingly-much More Than Understandingly. It Was One Of Those Rare Smiles With A Quality Of Eternal Reassurance In It, That You May Come Across Four Or Five Times In Life. It Faced--or Seemed To Face--the Whole Eternal World For An Instant, And Then Concentrated On You With An Irresistible Prejudice In Your Favor. 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.

I Hope She'll Be A Fool -- That's The Best Thing A Girl Can Be In This World, A Beautiful Little Fool.

People Invariably Chose Inimitable People To Imitate.

I Began To Realize That For Two Years My Life Had Been A Drawing On Resources That I Did Not Possess, That I Had Been Mortgaging Myself Physically And Spiritually Up To The Hilt.

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William Lloyd Garrison

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