F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It was an amazing predicament. He was, in one sense, the richest man that ever lived - and yet was he worth anything at all? If his secret should transpire there was no telling to what measures the Government might resort in order to prevent a panic, in gold as well as in jewels. They might take over the claim immediately and institute a monopoly.
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Many nights he lay there dreaming awake of secret cafes 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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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.
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The greatest profound pain is cased by, and is the result of our own illusions, fantasies and dreams.
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Dear, don't think of getting out of bed yet. I've always suspected that early rising in early life makes one nervous.
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Her beautiful eyes and lips were very grave as she made her choice, and Anthony thought again how naive was her every gesture; she took all the things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter.
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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.
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You can’t repeat the past.” “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!
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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.
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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.
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This is the beauty I want. Beauty has got to be astonishing, astounding-- it's got to burst in on you like a dream, like the exquisite eyes of a girl.
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One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
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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.
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I have asked a lot of my emotions-one hundred and twenty stories. The price was high, right up with Kipling, because there was one little drop of something, not blood, not a tear, not my seed, but me more intimately than these, in every story, it was the extra I had. Now it has gone and I am just like you now.
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The two basic stories of all times are Cinderella and Jack the Giant Killer-the charm of women and the courage of men.
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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.
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The unwelcome November rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence, the night.
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I must hold in balance the sense of the futility of effort and the sense of the necessity to struggle; the conviction of the inevitability of failure and still the determination to 'succeed' - and, more than these, the contradiction between the dead hand of the past and the high intentions of the future.