Quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald

It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being. This, too, was quite characteristic of Amory.

The grass is full of ghost to-night.' 'The whole campus is alive with them.

I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter. 'I suppose she talks, she eats, and everything.

The sea, he thought, had treasured it's memories deeper than the faithless land.

It's always a delusion when I see what you don't want to see (Nicole to Dick).

This general eclipse of ambition and determination and fortitude, all of the very qualities on which I have prided myself, is ridiculous, and, I must admit, somewhat obscene.

mad with common sense

You could say that this was where an accidental wind blew him but I don't think so. I would rather think that in a long shot he saw a new way of measuring our jerky hopes and graceful rogueries and awkward sorrows, and that he came here from choice to be with us to the end. Like the plane coming down into the Glendale airport into the warm darkness.

The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle, complimentary way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.

the sensuous heat of early afternoon made blinding freckles on the checkered luncheon cloth.

The span of his seventy-five years had acted as a magic bellows—the first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back.

Our thoughts were frosty mist along the eaves; our two ghosts kissed, high on the long, mazed wires - eerie half-laughter echoes here and leaves only a fatuous sigh for young desires; regret has followed after things she loved, leaving the great husk.

Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay.

What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?' cried Daisy, 'and the day after that, and the next thirty years?' 'Don't be morbid,' Jordan said. 'Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.

There was one of his loneliness coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully – assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.

to have and to hold, and, in time - let go

But airports lead you way back in history like oases, like the stops on the great trade routes. The sight of air travellers strolling in ones and twos into midnight airports will draw a small crowd any night up to two. The young people look at the planes, the older ones look at the passengers with a watchful incredulity.

When a girl feels that she's perfectly groomed and dressed she can forget that part of her. That's charm. The more parts of yourself you can afford to forget the more charm you have.

the girl really worth having won't wait for anybody

Afterwards he remembered one reply of hers to something he had asked her. He remembered it in this form – perhaps he had unconsciously arranged and polished it.

All life was transmitted into terms of their love, all experience, all desires, all ambitions, were nullified - their senses of humour crawled into corners to sleep;

He had slowed up to avoid the inevitable end of his thought: --the frontiers of consciousness. The frontiers that artists must explore were not for her, ever. She was fine-spun, inbred--eventually she might find rest in some quiet mysticism. 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. --Not for you, he almost said. It's too tough a game for you.

He's quite as nervously broken down as I am, but it manifests itself in different ways. His inclination is toward megalomania and mine toward melancholy.

I've got one more record. - Have you heard So Long, Letty? I suppose you have.' 'Honestly, you don't understand - I haven't heard a thing.' Nor known, nor smelt, nor tasted he might have added; only hot cheeked girls in hot secret rooms. The young maidens he had known at New Haven in 1914 kissed men saying 'There!' hands at the man's chest to push him away. Now there was this scarcely saved waif of disaster bringing him the essence of a continent...