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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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The Only Way To

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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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.

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Life Cracked Like Ice!

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

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If All Your Clothes Are Worn To The Same State, It Means You Go Out Too Much.

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.

I Thought Of Gatsby's Wonder When He First Picked Out The Green Light At The End Of Daisy's Dock. He Had Come A Long Way To This Lawn And 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. [- Nick Carroway]

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

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

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.

I Like People And I Like Them To Like Me, But I Wear My Heart Where God Put It, On The Inside.

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

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.

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

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.

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!

I Hope You Make The Best Of It. And I Hope You See Things That Startle You. I Hope You Feel Things You Never Felt Before. I Hope You Meet People With A Different Point Of View. I Hope You Live A Life You're Proud Of. If You Find That You're Not, I Hope You Have The Strength To Start All Over Again.

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

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

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.

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.

She Knew Few Words And Believed In None.

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

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

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

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

People Disappeared, Reappeared, Made Plans To Go Somewhere, And Then Lost Each Other, Searched For Each Other, Found Each Other A Few Feet Away.

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It's A Mining Town In Lotus Land.

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.

No Decent Career Was Ever Founded On A Public.

His Youth Seemed Never So Vanished As Now In The Contrast Between The Utter Loneliness Of This Visit And That Riotous, Joyful Party Of Four Years Before. Things That Had Been The Merest Commonplaces Of His Life Then, Deep Sleep, The Sense Of Beauty Around Him, All Desire, Had Flown Away And The Gaps They Left Were Filled Only With The Great Listlessness Of His Disillusion.

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.

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

All The Time Something Within Her Was Crying For A Decision. She Wanted Her Life Shaped Now, Immediately — And The Decision Must Be Made By Some Force — Of Love, Of Money, Of Unquestionable Practicality — That Was Close At Hand

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.

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Your First Most Typical Figure In Any New Place Turns Out To Be A Bluff Or A Local Nuisance.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

I Hope Something Happens. I'm Restless As The Devil And Have A Horror Of Getting Fat Or Falling In Love And Growing Domestic.

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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.

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

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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.

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--

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.

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

They Had Spent A Year In France For No Particular Reason, And Then Drifted Here And There Unrestfully Wherever People Played Polo And Were Rich Together.

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

No One Should Live Beyond 30.

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

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

Marriage Was Created Not To Be A Background But To Need One. Mine Is Going To Be Outstanding. It Can't, Shan't Be The Setting - It's Going To Be The Performance, The Lively, Lovely, Glamorous Performance, And The World Shall Be The Scenery.

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

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

The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get - Children.

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

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!

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I'm Not Much Like Myself Any More.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

At Any Rate, Let Us Love For A While, For A Year Or So, You And Me. That's A Form Of Divine Drunkenness That We Can All Try. There Are Only Diamonds In The Whole World, Diamonds And Perhaps The Shabby Gift Of Disillusion.

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

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The Bar Is In Full Swing, And Floating Rounds Of Cocktails Permeate The Garden Outside, Until The Air Is Alivewith Chatter And Laughter, And Casual Innuendo And Introductions Forgotten On The Spot, And Enthusiastic Meetings Between Women Who Never Knew Each Other’s Names.

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

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.

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.

I Love This Simply Because It's Cute, And I Guess It's A Sign Of The Times In Many Respect. It's Pretty Much Saying You Complete Me, Only In The Sweetest Way Possible.

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.

The Exhilarating Ripple Of Her Voice Was A Wild Tonic In The Rain.

Wine Gave A Sort Of Gallantry To Their Own Failure.

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.

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

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

Trouble Has No Necessary Connection With Discouragement. Discouragement Has A Germ Of Its Own, As Different From Trouble As Arthritis Is Different From A Stiff Joint.

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

The Transition From Libertine To Prig Was So Complete.

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

What'll We Do With Ourselves This Afternoon? And The Day After That, And The Next Thirty Years?

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.

I Am Not A Great Man, But Sometimes I Think The Impersonal And Objective Equality Of My Talent And The Sacrifices Of It, In Pieces, To Preserve Its Essential Value Has Some Sort Of Epic Grandeur.

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.

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.

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.

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 Dispensed Starlight To Casual Moths.

It Is Difficult For Young People To Live Things Down. We Will Tolerate Vice, Grand Larceny And The Quieter Forms Of Murder In Our Contemporaries... But Our Children's Friends Must Show A Blank Service Record.

"i Was Counting The Waves", Replied Amory Gravely, "i'm Going In For Statistics".

I'm Restless. My Whole Generation Is Restless. I'm Sick Of A System Where The Richest Man Gets The Most Beautiful Girl If He Wants Her, Where The Artist Without An Income Has To Sell His Talents To A Button Manufacturer. Even If I Had No Talents I'd Not Be Content To Work Ten Years, Condemned Either To Celibacy Or A Furtive Indulgence, To Give Some Man's Son An Automobile.

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

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.

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.

Everything That Begins, Begins With Blood.

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.

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.

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.

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

A Writer Wastes Nothing.

Progress Was A Labyrinth ... People Plunging Blindly In And Then Rushing Wildly Back, Shouting That They Had Found It ... The Invisible King-the élan Vital-the Principle Of Evolution ... Writing A Book, Starting A War, Founding A School.

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.

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 Want Leisure To Read—an Immense Amount.

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.

Nicole's World Had Fallen To Pieces, But It Was Only A Flimsy And Scarcely Created World; Beneath It Her Emotions And Instincts Fought On.

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

He Was Going To Live In New York, And Be Known At Every Restaurant And Café, Wearing A Dress Suit From Early Evening To Early Morning, Sleeping Away The Dull Hours Of The Forenoon.

That Was Always My Experience-a Poor Boy In A Rich Town; A Poor Boy In A Rich Boy's School; A Poor Boy In A Rich Man's Club At Princeton .... However, I Have Never Been Able To Forgive The Rich For Being Rich, And It Has Colored My Entire Life And Works.

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

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.

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

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

When The First-rate Author Wants An Exquisite Heroine Or A Lovely Morning, He Finds That All The Superlatives Have Been Worn Shoddy By His Inferiors. It Should Be A Rule That Bad Writers Must Start With Plain Heroines And Ordinary Mornings, And, If They Are Able, Work Up To Something Better.

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.

Books Are Like Brothers. I Am An Only Child. Gatsby [is] My Imaginary Eldest Brother.

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.

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.

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

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

He Wanted To Appear Suddenly To Her In Novel And Heroic Colors. He Wanted To Stir Her From That Casualness She Showed Toward Everything Except Herself.

Her Voice Is Full Of Money.

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.

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

Very Well Then, Better A Sane Crook Than A Mad Puritan.

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.

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.

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

Let Us Learn To Show Our Friendship For A Man When He Is Alive And Not After He Is Dead.

If You Are Strong Enough, There Are No Precedents.

...i Think He Revalued Everything In His House According To The Measure Of Response It Drew From Her Well-loved Eyes.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Great Gatsby Important

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Helpless Ecstasy Of Loosing Himself In Her Charm Was A Powerful Opiate Rather Than A Tonic.

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

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

It Takes Two To Make An Accident.

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.

A Great Social Success Is A Pretty Girl Who Plays Her Cards As Carefully As If She Were Plain.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I Simply State That I'm A Product Of A Versatile Mind In A Restless Generation - With Every Reason To Throw My Mind And Pen In With The Radicals. Even If, Deep In My Heart, I Thought We Were All Blind Atoms In A World As Limited As A Stroke Of A Pendulum, I And My Sort Would Struggle Against Tradition; Try, At Least, To Displace Old Cants With New Ones. I've Thought I Was Right About Life At Various Times, But Faith Is Difficult. One Thing I Know. If Living Isn't Seeking For The Grail It May Be A Damned Amusing Game.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Great Gatsby Important

I Think That We Already Have A Really Good System In Town, But I Have A Vision That It Could Be Even Better. My Vision Is That Academic Excellence Is The Area That We Should Pursue More, Coupled With Fiscal Discipline.

Academic Excellence

Who Would Not Be Pleased At Carrying Lamps Helpfully Through The Darkness?

A Classic,' Suggested Anthony, 'is A Successful Book That Has Survived The Reaction Of The Next Period Or Generation. Then It's Safe, Like A Style In Architecture Or Furniture. It's Acquired A Picturesque Dignity To Take The Place Of Its Fashion.

Any Person With Any Imagination Is Bound To Be Afraid.

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

The Things That'll Make You Fail I'll Love Always.

The Men--the Undergraduates Of Yale And Princeton Are Cleaner, Healthier, Better-looking, Better Dressed, Wealthier And More Attractive Than Any Undergraduate Body In The Country.

It Is Youth’s Felicity As Well As Its Insufficiency That It Can Never Live In The Present, But Must Always Be Measuring Up The Day Against Its Own Radiantly Imagined Future

Live In The Present

It’s A Great Advantage Not To Drink Among Hard Drinking People.

America Is A Willingness Of The Heart.

Life Is So Damned Hard, So Damned Hard... It Just Hurts People And Hurts People, Until Finally It Hurts Them So That They Can't Be Hurt Ever Any More. That's The Last And Worst Thing It Does.

Here Was A New Generation, Shouting The Old Cries, Learning The Old Creeds, Through A Revery Of Long Days And Nights; Destined Finally To Go Out Into That Dirty Gray Turmoil To Follow Love And Pride; A New Generation Dedicated More Than The Last To The Fear Of Poverty And The Worship Of Success; Grown Up To Find All Gods Dead, All Wars Fought, All Faiths In Man Shaken.

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

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

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

You Really Ought To Read More Books - You Know, Those Things That Look Like Blocks But Come Apart On One Side.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

Reporting The Extreme Things As If They Were The Average Things Will Start You On The Art Of Fiction.

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.

I Had A Strong Sudden Instinct That I Must Be Alone. I Didn’t Want To See Any People At All. I Had Seen So Many People All My Life -- I Was An Average Mixer, But More Than Average In A Tendency To Identify Myself, My Ideas, My Destiny, With Those Of All Classes That Came In Contact With. I Was Always Saving Or Being Saved -- In A Single Morning I Would Go Through The Emotions Ascribable To Wellington At Waterloo. I Lived In A World Of Inscrutable Hostiles And Inalienable Friends And Supporters.

The Mouth Was Wide Open And Ripped At The Corners, As Though She Had Choked A Little In Giving Up The Tremendous Vitality She Had Stored So Long.

Murder Your Darlings.

Beautiful Things Grow To A Certain Height And Then They Fail And Fade Off, Breathing Out Memories As They Decay. And Just As Any Period Decays In Our Minds, The Things Of That Period Should Decay Too, And In That Way They're Preserved For A While In The Few Hearts Like Mine That React To Them. Trying To Preserve A Century By Keeping Its Relics Up To Date Is Like Keeping A Dying Man Alive By Stimulants.

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William Moulton Marston

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