F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth--but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered 'Listen,' a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.”

“The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise--she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression--then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.'I'm p-paralyzed with happiness.'She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)”

“When I want something bad enough, common sense tells me to go and take it--and not get caught.”

“Oh, it doesn't get me. I'm pretty well cloistered, and I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway.”

“Kiss me now, love me now.”

“You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.”

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

“Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me.”

“I want to do everything in the world with you.”

“But to be included in Dick Diver’s world for a while was a remarkable experience: people believed he made special reservations about them, recognizing the proud uniqueness of their destinies, buried under the compromises of how many years. He won everyone quickly with an exquisite consideration and a politeness that moved so fast and intuitively that it could be examined only in its effect. Then, without caution, lest the first bloom of the relation wither, he opened the gate to his amusing world. So long as they subscribed to it completely, their happiness was his preoccupation, but at the first flicker of doubt as to its all- inclusiveness he evaporated before their eyes, leaving little communicable memory of what he had said or done.”

“She was about twenty-four, Rosemary guessed - her face could have been described in terms of conventional prettiness, but the effect was that it had been made first on the heroic scale with strong structure and marking, as if the features and vividness of brow and coloring, everything we associate with temperament and character had been molded with a Rodinesque intention, and then chiseled away in the direction of prettiness to a point where a single slip would have irreparably diminished its force and quality. With the mouth the sculptor had taken desperate chances - it was the cupid's bow of a magazine cover, yet it shared the distinction of the rest.”

“I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be over-dreamed—that voice was a deathless song.”

“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.”

“This isn’t just an epigram — life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.”

“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.”

“Then I heard footsteps on a stairs, and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice: “Get some chairs, why don‟t you, so somebody can sit down.”

“The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty.”

“Quando te sentires com vontade de criticar alguém, lembra-te disto: nem todos tiveram neste mundo as vantagens que tu tiveste.”

“In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year... Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”

“The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.”

“She had caught a cold and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.”

“The tears coursed down her cheeks - not freely, however, for when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an inky color, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets. A humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes on her face whereupon she threw up her hands, sank into a chair and went off into a deep vinous sleep.”

“There’s a loneliness that only exists in one’s mind. The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is blink.”

“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?” “That’s why I came over to-night.”

“I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.”

“I'm paralyzed with happiness”

“I stared at him and then at Tom, who had made a parallel discovery less than an hour before — and it occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.”

“Az a helyzet, hogy hinni akarunk. A diákok a klasszikusokban, a választópolgárok a képviselőikben, az országok az államférfiakban, ámde nem tudnak hinni bennük. Mert nagy a hangzavar, és a sok kusza, önellentmondó és meggondolatlan bírálat közt nem tudnak eligazodni. Az újságok esetében még rosszabb a helyzet. Bármely gazdag, reakciós párt, ha kellőképp áthatja a pénzügyi zsenialitásnak nevezett kapzsiság és bírvágy szelleme, bízvást szert tehet egy újságra, amely aztán lelki tápláléka lesz sok ezer fáradt és űzött embernek, akit annyira lefoglal az úgynevezett modern élet, hogy már csak előemésztett eledel fogyasztására képes. A választó két rongyos centért politikai meggyőződést, előítéletet és filozófiát vásárolhat magának.”

“Of the things they possessed in common, greatest of all was their almost uncanny pull at each others hearts.”

“You are the loveliest thing that I have ever known.”

“She knew what he wanted, and gave it to him; not words, but a smile of warmth and delight — a smile that said, “I’m yours for the asking; I’m won.” It was not a smile that undervalued herself, because through its beauty it spoke for both of them, expressed all the potential joy that existed between them.”

“Tengo treinta años -dije-. He rebasado en cinco años la edad de mentirme a mí mismo y llamarle a eso honor.”

“Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body.”

“You remind me of a smoked cigarette.”

“I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway”

“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.”

“Most of us are content to exist and breed and fight for the right to do both, and the dominant idea, the foredoomed attest to control one's destiny, is reserved for the fortunate or unfortunate few.”

“We're going through the black air with our arms wide and our feet straight out behind like a dolphin's tail, and we're going to think we'll never hit the silver down there till suddenly it'll be all warm round us and full of little kissing, caressing waves.”

“This is the beauty I want. Beauty has got to be astonishing, astounding-- it's got to burst in on you like a dream, like the exquisite eyes of a girl.”

“Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.”

“To be afraid, a person has either to be very great and strong-- or else a coward. I'm neither.”

“What was it? Why won't you tell me?""I don't want to break down your illusions.""My dear man, I have no illusions about you.""I mean illusions about yourself.”

“She was incurably dishonest.”

“Celtic you'll live and Celtic you'll die.”

“When the lightning strikes one of us, it strikes both”

“She confused him and hindered the flow of his ideas. Self-expression had never seemed at once so desirable and so impossible.”

“They proceeded with an infinite guile that would have horrified her parents.”

“In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.”

“How do you do, Captain,” she said, unfastening her eyes from his with difficulty, as though they had become entangled.”

“Each night when she prepared for bed she smeared her face with some new unguent which she hoped illogically would give back the glow and freshness to her vanishing beauty.”