F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes
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It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning light. The Shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool, lovely day.
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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.
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Before you criticize others, remember, they may not have had the same opportunities in life as you have had
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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.
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Ah," she cried, "you look so cool." Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space. With an effort she glanced down at the table. You always look so cool," she repeated. She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw.
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Her beauty climbed the rolling slope, it came into the room, rustling ghost-like through the curtains.
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...for a moment people set down their glasses in county clubs and speak-easies and thought of their old best dreams.
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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.
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They're all deserting me. I've been too kind. Spare the rod and spoil the fun. Oh, for the glands of a Bismarck.
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Stahr's eyes and Kathleen's met and tangled. For an instant they made love as no one ever dares to do after. Their glance was slower than an embrace, more urgent than a call.
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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.
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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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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Having once found the intensity of art, nothing else that can happen in life can ever again seem as important as the creative process.
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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--
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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.
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In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him.
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I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.
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you once liked me, didn't you?, he asked. LIKED you- I LOVED you. Everybody loved you. You could've had anybody you wanted for the asking.
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"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."