Background Image

...

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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Officer Looked At

F. Scott Fitzgerald

...

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.

Views: 5

Topic

More From F. Scott Fitzgerald

Let's Borrow Life Preservers And Jump Over. I Think We Should Do Something Spectacular. I Feel That All Our Lives Have Been Too Restrained.

You Know I'm Old In Some Ways-in Others-well, I'm Just A Little Girl. I Like Sunshine And Pretty Things And Cheerfulness-and I Dread Responsibility.

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.

Daisy Began To Sing With The Music In A Husky, Rhythmic Whisper, Bringing Out A Meaning In Each Word That It Had Never Had Before And Would Never Have Again. When The Melody Rose, Her Voice Broke Up Sweetly, Following It, In A Way Contralto Voices Have, And Each Change Tipped Out A Little Of Her Warm Human Magic Upon The Air.

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

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

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

Baltimore Is Warm But Pleasant... I Belong Here, Where Everything Is Civilized And Gay And Rotted And Polite.

I Felt A Haunting Loneliness Sometimes, And Felt It In Others--young Clerks In The Dusk, Wasting The Most Poignant Moments Of Night And Life.

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

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

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

The Extraordinary Thing Is Not That People In A Lifetime Turn Out Worse Or Better Than We Had Prophesied; Particularly In America That Is To Be Expected. The Extraordinary Thing Is How People Keep Their Levels, Fulfill Their Promises, Seem Actually Buoyed Up By An Inevitable Destiny.

The Rich Are Different From Us.

Through All He Said, Even Through His Appalling Sentimentality, I Was Reminded Of Something-an Elusive Rhythm, A Fragment Of Lost Words, That I Heard Somewhere A Long Time Ago. For A Moment A Phrase Tried To Take Shape In My Mouth And My Lips Parted Like A Dumb Man's, As Though There Was More Struggling Upon Them Than A Wisp Of Startled Air. But They Made No Sound And What I Had Almost Remembered Was Uncommunicable Forever.

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.

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.

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

These Lights, This Brightness, These Clusters Of Human Hope, Of Wild Desire—i Shall Take These Lights In My Fingers. I Shall Make Them Bright, And Whether They Shine Or Not, It Is In These Fingers That They Shall Succeed Or Fail.

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

Great Gatsby Important

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

The Cracked Plate Has To Be Retained In The Pantry, Has To Be Kept In Service As A Household Necessity. It Can Never Be Warmed On The Stove Nor Shuffled With The Other Plates In The Dishpan; It Will Not Be Brought Out For Company But It Will Do To Hold Crackers Late At Night Or To Go Into The Ice-box With The Left Overs.

Intelligence Is A Mere Instrument Of Circumstances.

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.

The Best Of America Drifts To Paris. The American In Paris Is The Best American.

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

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.

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.

That Is Part Of The Beauty Of All Literature. You Discover That Your Longings Are Universal Longings, That You're Not Lonely And Isolated From Anyone. You Belong.

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

Great Gatsby Nick

Then A Strange Thing Happened. She Turned To Him And Smiled, And As He Saw Her Smile Every Rag Of Anger And Hurt Vanity Dropped From Him — As Though His Very Moods Were But The Outer Ripples Of Her Own, As Though Emotion Rose No Longer In His Breast Unless She Saw Fit To Pull An Omnipotent Controlling Thread.

I Love New York On Summer Afternoons When Everyone's Away. There's Something Very Sensuous About It - Overripe, As If All Sorts Of Funny Fruits Were Going To Fall Into Your Hands.

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

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

No Matter How Low You Go, There's Always An Unexplored Basement.

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!

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.

The Best Of America Drifts To Paris. The American In Paris Is The Best American. It Is More Fun For An Intelligent Person To Live In An Intelligent Country. France Has The Only Two Things Toward Which We Drift As We Grow Older—intelligence And Good Manners.

The Rhythm Of The Weekend, With Its Birth, Its Planned Gaiety, And Its Announced End, Followed The Rhythm Of Life And Was A Substitute For It.

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.

People Living Alone Get Used To Loneliness.

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

We All Must Try To Be Good.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

How Different It All Was From What You'd Planned.

At Fifteen You Had The Radiance Of Early Morning, At Twenty You Will Begin To Have The Melancholy Brilliance Of The Moon.

Murder Your Darlings.

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.

We Want To Believe. Young Students Try To Believe In Older Authors, Constituents Try To Believe In Their Congressmen, Countries Try To Believe In Their Statesmen, But They Can't. Too Many Voices, Too Much Scattered, Illogical Ill-considered Criticism.

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.

When The Lightning Strikes One Of Us, It Strikes Both

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

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

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.

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

There Is A Moment—oh, Just Before The First Kiss, A Whispered Word—something That Makes It Worth While.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

You Know, You’re A Little Complicated After All.” “oh No,” She Assured Him Hastily. “no, I’m Not Really - I’m Just A - I’m Just A Whole Lot Of Different Simple People.

Life Was A Damned Muddle - A Football Game With Everyone Offside And The Referee Gotten Rid Of - Everyone Claiming The Referee Would Have Been On His Side.

First, He Realized That The Sea Was Blue And That There Was An Enormous Quantity Of It, And That It Roared And Roared-really All The Banalities About The Ocean That One Could Realize, But If Any One Had Told Him Then That These Things Were Banalities, He Would Have Gaped In Wonder.

Enormous Quantities

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

And Yale Is November, Crisp And Energetic.

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

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

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

...the Test Of A First-rate Intelligence Is The Ability To Hold Two Opposed Ideas In The Mind At The Same Time, And Still Retain The Ability To Function. One Should, For Example, Be Able To See That Things Are Hopeless And Yet Be Determined To Make Them Otherwise. This Philosophy Fitted On To My Early Adult Life, When I Saw The Improbable, The Implausible, Often The "impossible," Come True.

Positive Thinking

Positive Attitude

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

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.

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

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

What You Have Felt And Thought Will By Itself Invent A New Style, So That When People Talk About Style They Are Always A Little Astonished At The Newness Of It, Because They Think That It Is Only Style That They Are Talking About, When What They Are Talking About Is The Attempt To Express A New Idea With Such Force That It Will Have The Originality Of The Thought.it Is An Awfully Lonesome Business, And, As You Know, I Never Wanted You To Go Into It, But If You Are Going Into It At All, I Want You To Go Into It Knowing The Sort Of Things That Took Me Years To Learn.

I’m Not Sure What I’ll Do, But— Well, I Want To Go Places And See People. I Want My Mind To Grow. I Want To Live Where Things Happen On A Big Scale.

Rosemary Bubbled With Delight At The Trunks. Her Naivete Responded Whole-heartedly To The Expensive Simplicity Of The Divers, Unaware Of Its Complexity And Its Lack Of Innocence, Unaware That It Was All A Selection Of Quality Rather Than Quantity From The Run Of The World's Bazaar; And That The Simplicity Of Behavior Also, The Nursery-like Peace And Good Will, The Emphasis On The Simpler Virtues, Was Part Of A Desperate Bargain With The Gods And Had Been Attained Through Struggles She Could Not Have Guessed At.

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.

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

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.

If You Are Strong Enough, There Are No Precedents.

The Growth Of Intimacy Is Like That. First One Gives Off His Best Picture, The Bright And Finished Product Mended With Bluff And Falsehood And Humour. Then More Details Are Required And One Paints A Second Portrait, And A Third – Before Long The Best Lines Cancel Out – And The Secret Is Exposed At Last; The Planes Of The Pictures Have Intermingled And Given Us Away, And Though We Paint And Paint We Can No Longer Sell A Picture. We Must Be Satisfied With Hoping That Such Fatuous Accounts Of Ourselves As We Make To Our Wives And Children And Business Associates Are Accepted As True

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

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

When Vanity Kissed Vanity, A Hundred Happy Junes Ago, He Pondered O'er Her Breathlessly, And, That All Men Might Ever Know, He Rhymed Her Eyes With Life And Death: "thru Time I'll Save My Love!" He Said. . . Yet Beauty Vanished With His Breath, And, With Her Lovers, She Was Dead. . . -ever His Wit And Not Her Eyes, Ever His Art And Not Her Hair: "who'd Learn A Trick In Rhyme, Be Wise And Pause Before His Sonnet There". . . So All My Words, However True, Might Sing You To A Thousandth June, And No One Ever Know That You Were Beauty For An Afternoon.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

So We Beat On, Boats Against The Current, Borne Back Ceaselessly Into The Past.

Aristocracy's Only An Admission That Certain Traits Which We Call Fine - Courage And Honor And Beauty And All That Sort Of Thing - Can Best Be Developed In A Favorable Environment, Where You Don't Have The Warpings Of Ignorance And Necessity.

Feel Like Criticizing Any One," He Told Me, "just Remember

Great Gatsby Love

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.

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.

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

You Said A Bad Driver Was Only Safe Until She Met Another Bad Driver? Well, I Met Another Bad Driver, Didn't I? I Mean It Was Careless Of Me To Makes Such A Wrong Guess. I Thought You Were Rather An Honest, Straightforward Person I Thought It Was Your Secret Pride." "i'm Thirty," I Said. "i'm Five Years Too Old To Lie To Myself And Call It Honor." She Didn't Answer. Angry, And Half In Love With Her, And Tremendously Sorry, I Turned Away.

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.

Do You Ever Wait For The Longest Day Of The Year And Then Miss It? I Always Wait For The Longest Day Of The Year And Then Miss It!

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

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.

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

I Want To Just Be Lazy And I Want Some Of The People Around Me To Be Doing Things, Because That Makes Me Feel Comfortable And Safe - And I Want Some Of Them To Be Doing Nothing At All, Because They Can Be Graceful And Companionable For Me.

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

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.

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

I Didn't Realize It, But The Days Came Along One After Another, And Then Two Years Were Gone, And Everything Was Gone, And I Was Gone.

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

Learn Young About Hard Work And Manners - And You'll Be Through The Whole Dirty Mess And Nicely Dead Again Before You Know It.

A Sudden Gust Of Rain Blew Over Them And Then Another - As If Small Liquid Clouds Were Bouncing Along The Land. Lightning Entered The Sea Far Off And The Air Blew Full Of Crackling Thunder. The Table Cloths Blew Around The Pillars. They Blew And Blew And Blew. The Flags Twisted Around The Red Chairs Like Live Things, The Banners Were Ragged, The Corners Of The Table Tore Off Through The Burbling Billowing Ends Of The Cloths.

Thirty--the Promise Of A Decade Of Loneliness, A Thinning List Of Single Men To Know, A Thinning Brief-case Of Enthusiasm, Thinning Hair.

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.

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

Nothing Any Good Isn't Hard.

The Truth Was That For Some Months He Had Been Going Through That Partitioning Of The Things Of Youth Wherein It Is Decided Whether Or Not To Die For What One No Longer Believes.

For What It’s Worth, It’s Never Too Late To Be Whoever You Want To Be.

I Want To Do Everything In The World With You.

I’ve Heard It Said That Daisy’s Murmur Was Only To Make People Lean Toward Her; An Irrelevant Criticism That Made It No Less Charming.

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

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.

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

Great Gatsby Book

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

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

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

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.

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

Never Confuse A Single Defeat With A Final Defeat.

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

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

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

There Are No Second Acts In American Lives.

It's A Mining Town In Lotus Land.

I Want To Die Violently Instead Of Fading Out Sentimentally.

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

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

Never Befuddle A Solitary Thrashing With A Last Annihilation.

The Purpose Of A Work Of Fiction Is To Appeal To The Lingering After-effects In The Reader's Mind As Differing From, Say, The Purpose Of Oratory Or Philosophy Which Respectively Leave People In A Fighting Or Thoughtful Mood.

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.

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

There's So Much Spring In The Air- There's So Much Lazy Sweetness In Your Heart.

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

Tender Is The Night

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.

The Mind Of A Little Child Is Fascinating, For It Looks On Old Things With New Eyes-but At About Twelve This Changes. The Adolescent Offers Nothing, Can Do Nothing, Say Nothing That The Adult Cannot Do Better.

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

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.

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

Great Gatsby American Dream

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.

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

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.

Taking Her Hand He Led Her Out Into A Broad Stretch Of Hard Sandy Soil That The Moon Flooded With Great Splendor. They Floated Out Like Drifting Moths Under The Rich Hazy Light, And As The Fantastic Symphony Wept And Exulted And Wavered And Despaired, Ardita's Last Sense Of Reality Dropped Away, And She Abandonded Her Imagination To The Dreamy Summer Scents Of Tropial Flowers And The Infinite Starry Spaces Overhead, Feeling That If She Opened Her Eyes It Would Be To Find Herself Dancing With A Ghost In A Land Created By Her Own Fantasy.

Before You Criticize Others, Remember, They May Not Have Had The Same Opportunities In Life As You Have Had

When Eleanor's Arm Touched His He Felt His Hands Grow Cold With Deadly Fear Lest He Should Lose The Shadow Brush With Which His Imagination Was Painting Wonders Of Her. He Watched Her From The Corners Of His Eyes As Ever He Did When He Walked With Her-- She Was A Feast And A Folly And He Wished It Had Been His Destiny To Sit Forever On A Haystack And See Life Through Her Green Eyes.

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

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.

They're A Rotten Crowd', I Shouted Across The Lawn. 'you're Worth The Whole Damn Bunch Put Together.

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

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

Given A Decent Start Any Girl Can Beat A Man Nowadays.

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

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.

Working-girls, In Pairs And Groups And Swarms, Loitered By These Windows, Choosing Their Future Boudoirs From Some Resplendent Display Which Included Even A Man's Silk Pajamas Laid Domestically Across The Bed. They Stood In Front Of The Jewelry Stores And Picked Out Their Engagement Rings, And Their Wedding Rings And Their Platinum Wrist Watches, And Then Drifted On To Inspect The Feather Fans And Opera Cloaks; Meanwhile Digesting The Sandwiches And Sundaes They Had Eaten For Lunch.

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.

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.

Poetry Is Either Something That Lives Like Fire Inside You

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

Gatsby Turned Out All Right At The End; It Is What Preyed On Gatsby, What Foul Dust Floated In The Wake Of His Dreams That Temporarily Closed Out My Interest In The Abortive Sorrows And Short-winded Elations Of Men.

America Is A Willingness Of The Heart.

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

If You Try To Create A Type, You May End With Nothing. If You Do A Good Job Of Creating An Individual, You May Succeed At Creating A Type.

She Knew Few Words And Believed In None.

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.

I Suppose The Latest Thing Is To Sit Back And Let Mr. Nobody From Nowhere Make Love To Your Wife.

Great Gatsby Love

There's No Beauty Without Poignancy And There's No Poignancy Without The Feeling That It's Going, Men, Names, Books, Houses--bound For Dust--mortal--

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.

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

Tender Is The Night

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As Soon As I Arrived I Made An Attempt To Find My Host But The Two Or Three People Of Whom I Asked His Whereabouts Stared At Me In Such An Amazed Way And Denied So Vehemently An Knowledge Of His Movements That I Slunk Off In The Direction Of The Cocktail Table--the Only Place In The Garden Where A Single Man Could Linger Without Looking Purposeless And Alone.

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

The Sun Had Gone Down Behind The Tall Apartments Of The Movie Stars In The West Fifties, And The Unclear Voices Of Children, Already Gathered Like Crikets On The Grass, Rose Through The Hot Twilight.

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.

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.

A Writer Like Me Must Have An Utter Confidence, An Utter Faith In His Star. It's An Almost Mystical Feeling, A Feeling Of Nothing-can-happen-to Me, Nothing-can-touch-me.... I Once Had It. But Through A Series Of Blows, Many Of Them My Own Fault, Something Happened To That Sense Of Immunity And I Lost My Grip.

He Talked A Lot About The Past And I Gathered That He Wanted To Recover Something, Some Idea Of Himself Perhaps, That Had Gone Into Loving Daisy.

Trending Author

Chuck Palahniuk

Emmeline Pankhurst

Category