Quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald

Her face, ivory gold against the blurred sunset that strove through the rain…

Again at eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were five deep with throbbing taxicabs, bound for the theater district, I felt a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside. Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well.

Theoretically, great opportunities lay ahead of a young man of energy in that day and place, but Carl Miller had been incapable of establishing either with his superiors or his subordinates the reputation for approximate immutability which is essential to success in a hierarchic industry.

His mind, under the influence of that insidious mildew which eventually forms on all but the few, gave itself up furiously to every indignation of the age.

Either you think - or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

Understand now, I'm purely a fiction writer and do not profess to be an earnest student of political science, but I believe strongly that such a law as one prohibiting liquor is foolish, and all the writers, keenly interested in human welfare whom I know, laugh at the prohibition law.

There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

Such a kiss--it was a flower held against the face, never to be described, scarcely to be remembered; as though her beauty were giving off emanations of itself which settled transiently and already dissolving upon his heart.

Then the storm came swiftly, first falling from the heavens, then doubly falling in torrents from the mountains and washing loud down the roads and stone ditches; with it came a dark, frightening sky and savage filaments of lightning and world-splitting thunder, while ragged, destroying clouds fled along past the hotel. Mountains and lake disappeared - the hotel crouched amid tumult, chaos and darkness.

I learned a little of beauty - enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth - and I found, moreover, that there was no great literary tradition; there was only the tradition of the eventful death of every literary tradition....

her disposition is not all it should be; she wants what she wants when she wants it and she is prone to make every one around her pretty miserable when she doesn't get it—but in the true sense she is not spoiled. Her fresh enthusiasm, her will to grow and learn, her endless faith in the inexhaustibility of romance, her courage and fundamental honesty—these things are not spoiled.

She was a brave, hopeful woman and she was following her husband somewhere, changing herself to this kind of person or that, without being able to lead him a step out of his path, and sometimes realizing with discouragement how deep in him the guarded secret of her direction lay. And yet an air of luck clung about her, as if she were a token...

It was consoling, though, when Nicole remarked, apropos of a distraught saleswoman: 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.

Siempre que sientas deseos de criticar a alguien, me dijo, recuerda que no a todo el mundo se le han dado tantas facilidades como a ti.

They looked at each other at last, murmuring names that were a spell. Softly the two names lingered on the air, died away more slowly than other words, other names, slower than music in the mind.

Amory usually liked men individually, yet feared them in crowds unless the crowd was around him.

Gatsby credeva nella luce verde, nel futuro orgastico che anno dopo anno si ritira davanti a noi. Ieri c'è sfuggito, ma non importa: domani correremo più forte, allungheremo di più le braccia ... e un bel mattino... Così continuiamo a remare, barche contro corrente, risospinti senza posa nel passato.

Her eyes in the half-light suggested night and violets, and for a moment he stirred again to that half-forgotten remoteness of the afternoon.

I've found that I can always do the things that people do in books. Really they are the only things I can do.

For this is wisdom—to love and live,     To take what fate or the gods may give,     To ask no question, to make no prayer,     To kiss the lips and caress the hair,     Speed passion's ebb as we greet its flow,     To have and to hold, and, in time—let go.

Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement --discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.

But the rest offended her - and inarguably, because it wasn't a gesture but an emotion.

Please do not have a band, as I do not care for music.

It's only when the settlement work has gone on for months that one realizes how bad things are. As our secretary said to me, your finger-nails never seem dirty until you wash your hands.