Quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald

Dear little Dot, life is so damned hard. She was crying upon his shoulder. So damned hard, so damned hard, he repeated aimlessly; 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.

But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.

They were both overwhelmed by the sudden flatness that comes over American travellers in quiet foreign places. No stimuli worked upon them, no voices called them from without, no fragments of their own thoughts came suddenly from the minds of others.

The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say.

Afterward their ghosts played, yet both of them hoped from their souls never to meet. 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? She will have no other adventure like Amory, and if she reads this she will say: And Amory will have no other adventure like me.

In perspective it was tremendous

The latter was considered a good fellow and a fine leader, until a year later, when he disappeared with a mess fund of eleven hundred dollars and, like so many leaders, proved exceedingly difficult to follow.

The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person.

In fact, I once imagined you loved me a little bit, if you'll excuse the presumption.

We walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.

Frequently I had feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering in the horizon.

he hated to be sober. It made him conscious of the people around him, of that air of struggle, of greedy ambition, of hope more sordid than despair, of incessant passage up or down

The instant her voice broke off ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said.

There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him anymore.

I want to live where things happen on a big scale.

I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to extract a contributory emotion from me.

I detest these underdone men, he thought coldly. Boiled looking! Ought to be shoved back in the oven; just one more minute would do it.

She had once been a Catholic, but discovering that priests were infinitely more attentive when she was in process of losing or regaining faith in Mother Church, she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude.

Junior writers $300; Minor poets—$500 a week; Broken novelists—$850-1000; One play dramatists—$1500; Sucks—$2000. Wits—$2500.

I wouldn't ask too much of her,' I ventured. 'You can't change the past.' 'Can't change the past?' he cried incredulously. 'Why of course you can!

Some time before he introduced himself I'd got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.

Sometimes when you're around I've been tempted to kiss you suddenly and tell you that you were just an idealistic boy with a lot of caste nonsense in his head.

Astenersi dal giudicare implica un'infinita speranza.

He was good looking, sort of distinguished when he wants to be, had a line, and was properly inconstant. In fact, he summed up all the romance that her age and environment led her to desire