Quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald

Poetry is dying first. It'll be absorbed into prose sooner or later. For instance, the beautiful word, the colored and glittering word, and the beautiful simile belong in prose now. To get attention poetry has got to strain for the unusual word, the harsh, earthy word that's never been beautiful before.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... and one fine morning- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

He doesn't want any trouble with ANYbody.

He read at wine, he read in bed, He read aloud, had he the breath, His every thought was with the dead, And so he read himself to death.

So she dances around the room to a tune from down-stairs, her arms outstretched to an imaginary partner, the cigarette waving in her hand.)

Amory felt an immense desire to give people a sense of security.

He doesn't want any trouble with ANYbody.' 'Who doesn't?' I inquired. 'Gatsby. Somebody told me——

we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning——

For what it's worth, it's never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you're proud of. And if you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start over.

Into a dozen minds entered a quick suspicion, a rumour of scandal. Could it be that behind the scenes with this couple, apparently so in love, lurked some curious antipathy? Why else this streak of fire across such a cloudless heaven?

The lights of many battleships drifting like water jewels upon the dark Hudson...

IN MY YOUNGER and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...And then one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

I first read The Great Gatsby as a teenager; I imagine this is when most Americans encounter F. Scott Fitzgerald's seminal work.

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

It takes a genius to whine appealingly.

I liked to walk up Fith Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove.

Je préfère ces soirées-là. Elles sont plus intimes. Quand vous n'êtes qu'une poignée d'invités, l'intimité est impossible.

And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…

Again the word was a prayer, incense offered up to a high God through this new and unfathomable darkness

contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts. 'Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final,' he seemed to say, 'just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are.' We were in the

She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.