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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.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Working-girls, In Pairs And

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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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.

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You Remind Me Of A Smoked Cigarette.

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

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

He Dispensed Starlight To Casual Moths.

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Was It The Infinite Sadness Of Her Eyes That Drew Him Or The Mirror Of Himself That He Found In The Gorgeous Clarity Of Her Mind?

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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.

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

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

The Transition From Libertine To Prig Was So Complete.

There Are No Second Acts In American Lives.

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.

Joan Crawford Is Doubtless The Best Example Of The Flapper, The Girl You See In Smart Night Clubs, Gowned To The Apex Of Sophistication, Toying Iced Glasses With A Remote, Faintly Bitter Expression, Dancing Deliciously, Laughing A Great Deal, With Wide, Hurt Eyes. Young Things With A Talent For Living.

But With Every Word She Was Drawing Further And Further Into Herself, So He Gave That Up, And Only The Dead Dream Fought On As The Afternoon Slipped Away, Trying To Touch What Was No Longer Tangible, Struggling Unhappily, Undespairingly, Toward That Lost Voice Across The Room.

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

Tender Is The Night

All That Kept Her From Breaking Was That It Was Not An Image Of Strength That Was Leaving Her; She Would Be Just As Strong Without Him.

Here's To Alcohol, The Rose Colored Glasses Of Life.

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

I Want To Die Violently Instead Of Fading Out Sentimentally.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Celibacy Goes Deeper Than The Flesh.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

They Weren't Happy, And Neither Of Them Had Touched The Chicken Or The Ale---and Yet They Weren't Unhappy Either. There Was An Unmistakable Air Of Natural Intimacy About The Picture And Anybody Would Have Said That They Were Conspiring Together.

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?

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

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.

Life Is Much More Successfully Looked At From A Single Window.

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

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

In The Morning You Were Never Violently Sorry-- You Made No Resolutions, But If You Had Overdone It And Your Heart Was Slightly Out Of Order, You Went On The Wagon For A Few Days Without Saying Anything About It, And Waited Until An Accumulation Of Nervous Boredom Projected You Into Another Party.

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

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.

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

Knowing Nothing

The Victor Belongs To The Spoils.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

His Was A Great Sin Who First Invented Consciousness. Let Us Lose It For A Few Hours.

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.

Well, You Never Knew Exactly How Much Space You Occupied In People's Lives.

Tender Is The Night

Amory Took To Writing Poetry On Spring Afternoons, In The Gardens Of The Big Estates Near Princeton, While Swans Made Effective Atmosphere In The Artificial Pools, And Slow Clouds Sailed Harmoniously Above The Willow. May Came Too Soon, And Suddenly Unable To Bear Walls, He Wandered The Campus At All Hours Through Starlight And Rain.

There's A Right Way Of Doing Things And A Wrong Way. If You've Made Up Your Mind To Be Different From Everybody Else, I Don't Suppose I Can Stop You, But I Really Don't Think It's Very Considerate.

That Voice Was A Deathless Song.

Every Act Of Life, From The Morning Toothbrush To The Friend At Dinner, Became An Effort. I Hated The Night When I Couldn't Sleep And I Hated The Day Because It Went Toward Night.

No Amount Of Fire Or Freshness Can Challenge What A Man Will Store Up In His Ghostly Heart.

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

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!

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