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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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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What You Have Felt

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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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.

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

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

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

Often People Display A Curious Respect For A Man Drunk, Rather Like The Respect Of Simple Races For The Insane... There Is Something Awe-inspiring In One Who Has Lost All Inhibitions.

Travel, Which Had Once Charmed Him, Seemed, At Length, Unendurable, A Business Of Color Without Substance, A Phantom Chase After His Own Dream's Shadow.

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

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

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

Tender Is The Night

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.

In Crowded Rooms They Would Form Words With Their Lips For Each Other's Eyes

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.

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.

My Generation Of Radicals And Breakers-down Never Found Anything To Take The Place Of The Old Virtues Of Work And Courage And The Old Graces Of Courtesy And Politeness.

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

And In The End, We Were All Just Humans...drunk On The Idea That Love, Only Love, Could Heal Our Brokenness.

One Thin's Sure And Nothing's Surer The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get - Children. In The Meantime, In Between Time...

I Want You To Take A Red-hot Bath As Hot As You Can Bear It, And Just Relax Your Nerves. You Can Read In The Tub If You Wish.

I'm Inclined To Reserve All Judgments, A Habit That Has Opened Up Many Curious Natures To Me And Also Made Me The Victim Of Not A Few Veteran Bores.

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

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

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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.

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.

She Was A Faded But Still Lovely Woman Of Twenty-seven.

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

I Have Never Wished There Was A God To Call On- I Have Often Wished There Was A God To Thank.

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.

Don't Say 'wife.' I'm Your Mistress. Wife's Such An Ugly Word. Your 'permanent Mistress' Is So Much More Tangible And Desirable… .

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

There Was Never A Good Biography Of A Good Novelist. There Couldn't Be. He Is Too Many People If He's Any Good.

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

I've Got An Adjective That Just Fits 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.

...one Emotion After Another Crept Into Her Face Like Objects Into A Slowly Developing Picture.

Optimism Is The Content Of Small Men In High Places.

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

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

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

I Guess I'm The Black Death,' He Said Slowly. 'i Don't Seem To Bring People Happiness Any More.

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

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.

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 Want To Know You Moved And Breathed In The Same World With Me.

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.

Blessed Are The Dead That The Rain Falls On.

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

When You're Older You'll Know What People Who Love Suffer. The Agony. It's Better To Be Cold And Young Than To Love. It's Happened To Me Before But Never Like This - So Accidental - Just When Everything Was Going Well.

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

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Murder Your Darlings.

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

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People Living Alone Get Used To Loneliness.

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

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

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

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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.

First You Take A Drink, Then The Drink Takes A Drink, Then The Drink Takes You.

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

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Can't Repeat The Past?" He Cried Incredulously. "why Of Course You Can!" He Looked Around Him Wildly, As If The Past Were Lurking Here In The Shadow Of His House, Just Out Of Reach Of His Hand.

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

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.

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

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

At Eighteen Our Convictions Are Hills From Which We Look; At Forty-five They Are Caves In Which We Hide.

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

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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.

America Is A Willingness Of The Heart.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Life Starts All Over Again When It Gets Crisp In The Fall.

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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.

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

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

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.

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.

...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

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

Great Gatsby Love

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

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.

A Sense Of Responsibility Would Spoil Her. She's Too Pretty.

Sense Of Responsibility

Baseball Is A Game Played By Idiots For Morons.

Wine Gave A Sort Of Gallantry To Their Own Failure.

Suddenly She Realized That What She Was Regretting Was Not The Lost Past But The Lost Future, Not What Had Not Been But What Would Never Be.

A Lot Of Young Girls Together Is A Romantic Secret Thing Like The First Sight Of Wild Ducks At Dawn.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

Well, Let It Pass, He Thought; April Is Over, April Is Over. There Are All Kinds Of Love In The World, But Never The Same Love Twice. --the Sensible Thing

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

It Was Testimony To The Romantic Speculation He Inspired That There Were Whispers About Him From Those Who Had Found Little That It Was Necessary To Whisper About In This World.

A Writer Wastes Nothing.

A Squalid Phantasmagoria Of Breath

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

The Kiss Originated When The First Male Reptile Licked The First Female Reptile, Implying In A Subtle Way That She Was As Succulent As The Small Reptile He Had For Dinner The Night Before.

It Is Not Necessarily Poverty Of Spirit That Makes A Woman Surround Herself With Life - It Can Be A Superabundance Of Interest.

Tender Is The Night

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

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.

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--

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

You Can’t Repeat The Past.” “can’t Repeat The Past?” He Cried Incredulously. “why Of Course You Can!

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Great Gatsby American Dream

All Things Come To Him Who Mates.

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

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 Past--the Wild Charge At The Head Of His Men Up San Juan Hill; The First Years Of His Marriage When He Worked Late Into The Summer Dusk Down In The Busy City For Young Hildegarde Whom He Loved; The Days Before That When He Sat Smoking Far Into The Night In The Gloomy Old Button House On Monroe Street With His Grandfather-all These Had Faded Like Unsubstantial Dreams From His Mind As Though They Had Never Been. He Did Not Remember.

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.

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.

Smoking Had Come To Be An Important Punctuation Mark In The Long Sentence Of A Day On The Road.

Punctuation Marks

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

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

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

You Are The Loveliest Thing That I Have Ever Known.

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.

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.

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.

"if It Wasn’t For The Mist We Could See Your Home Across The Bay," Said Gatsby. "you Always Have A Green Light That Burns At The End Of Your Dock." Daisy Put Her Arm Through His Abruptly But He Seemed Absorbed In What He Had Just Said. Possibly It Had Occurred To Him That The Colossal Significance Of That Light Had Now Vanished Forever. Compared To The Great Distance That Had Separated Him From Daisy It Had Seemed Very Near To Him, Almost Touching Her. It Had Seemed As Close As A Star To The Moon. Now It Was Again A Green Light On A Dock. His Count Of Enchanted Things Had Diminished By One.

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

Falling In Love

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.

"oh, You Want Too Much!" She Cried To Gatsby. "i Love You Now - Isn't That Enough? I Can't Help What's Past." She Began To Sob Helplessly. "i Did Love Him Once-but I Loved You Too." Gatsby's Eyes Opened And Closed. "you Loved Me Too?" He Repeated. "even That's A Lie," Said Tom Savagely. "she Didn't Know You Were Alive. Why - There're Things Between Daisy And Me That You'll Never Know, Things That Neither Of Us Can Ever Forget."

They Were Stars On This Stage, Each Playing To An Audience Of Two: The Passion Of Their Pretense Created The Actuality. Here, Finally, Was The Quintessence Of Self-expression-- Yet It Was Probable That For The Most Part Their Love Expressed Gloria Rather Than Anthony. He Felt Often Like A Scarecly Tolerated Guest At A Party She Was Giving.

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

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

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

Men She Knew'? - She Had Conceded Vaguely To Herself That All Men Who Had Ever Been In Love With Her Were Her Friends.

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

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.

To The Wingless A More Interesting Phenomenon Is Their (w/e Egg) Dissimilarity In Every Particular Except Shape And Size.

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

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

Beauty And Love Pass, I Know... Oh, There's Sadness, Too. I Suppose All Great Happiness Is A Little Sad. Beauty Means The Scent Of Roses And Then The Death Of Roses-

Beauty And Love

He Lifted His Arms To The Crystaline, Radiant Sky. "i Know Myself," He Cried, "but That Is All.

Isn't Hollywood A Dump-in The Human Sense Of The Word. A Hideous Town, Pointed Up By The Insulting Gardens Of Its Rich, Full Of The Human Spirit At A New Low Of Debasement.

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.

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.

In A Few Days I'll Have Lived One Score And Three Days In This Vale Of Tears. On I Plod-always Bored, Often Drunk, Doing No Penance For My Faults-rather Do I Become More Tolerant Of Myself From Day To Day, Hardening My Crystal Heart With Blasphemous Humor And Shunning Only Toothpicks, Pathos, And Poverty As Being The Three Unforgivable Things In Life.

Her Fine High Forehead Sloped Gently Up To Where Her Hair, Bordering It Like An Armorial Shield, Burst Into Lovelocks And Waves And Curlicues Of Ash Blonde And Gold. Her Eyes Were Bright, Big, Clear, Wet And Shining, The Colour Of Her Cheeks Was Real, Breaking Close To The Surface From The Strong Young Pump Of Her Heart. Her Body Hovered Delicately On The Last Edge Of Childhood -- She Was Almost Eighteen, Nearly Complete, But The Dew Was Still On Her.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

But His Heart Was In A Constant, Turbulent Riot.

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

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.

It Takes Two To Make An Accident.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

When He Buys His Ties He Has To Ask If Gin Will Make Them Run.

I Want To Do Everything In The World With You.

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

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

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 Want To Die Violently Instead Of Fading Out Sentimentally.

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.

Her Voice Is Full Of Money.

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.

She Was Overstrained With Grief And Loneliness: Almost Any Shoulder Would Have Done As Well.

Over The Great Bridge, With The Sunlight Through The Girders Making A Constant Flicker Upon The Moving Cars, With The City Rising Up Across The River In White Heaps And Sugar Lumps All Built With A Wish Out Of Non-olfactory Money. The City Seen From The Queensboro Bridge Is Always The City Seen For The First Time, In Its First Wild Promise Of All The Mystery And The Beauty In The World.

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.

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