F. Scott Fitzgerald

“New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world.”

“I carry the place around the world in my heart but sometimes I try to shake it off in my dreams”

“Daddy's girl. Was it a 'itty-bitty bravekins and did it suffer? Oooooo-tweet, de tweetest thing, wasn't she dest too tweet? Before her tiny fist the forces of lust and corruption rolled away; nay, the very march of destiny stopped; inevitably became inevitable, syllogism, dialectic, all rationality fell away”

“Most of the big shore places were closed now. And there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of the ferryboat across the sound. And as the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away till gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes, A fresh green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams. For a transitory, enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent. Face to face, for the last time in history, with something commensurate to its capacity for wonder.”

“From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building. And just as it had been tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza roof to take leave of the beautiful city extending as far as the eyes could see, so now I went to the roof of that last and most magnificent of towers.Then I understood. Everything was explained. I had discovered the crowning error of the city. Its Pandora's box.Full of vaunting pride, the New Yorker had climbed here, and seen with dismay what he had never suspected. That the city was not the endless sucession of canyons that he had supposed, but that it had limits, fading out into the country on all sides into an expanse of green and blue. That alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining ediface that he had reared in his mind came crashing down.That was the gift of Alfred Smith to the citizens of New York.”

“Life is so damned hard, so damned hard... 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.”

“Had they nothing else to say to each other? Yet their eyes were full of more serious statements; and while they sought for commonplace sentences, they each felt the same languor. It was like a murmur of the soul, profound and continuous, dominating that of the voices. Surprised at this unexpected sweetness, it did not occur to them to discuss the sensation or discover the cause. Future happiness, like tropical shores, projects over the vastness that precedes it, its innate indolence, and wafts a scented breeze that intoxicates and dispels any anxiety about the unseen horizon.”

“Wine gave a sort of gallantry to their own failure.”

“I don't care about truth. I want some happiness.”

“A stout, middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting somewhat drunk on the edge of a great table, staring with unsteady concentration at the shelves of books. As we entered he wheeled excitedly around and examined Jordan from head to foot.“What do you think?” he demanded impetuously.“About what?”He waved his hand toward the book-shelves.“About that. As a matter of fact you needn’t bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They’re real.”“The books?”He nodded.“Absolutely real — have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and — Here! Lemme show you.”Taking our scepticism for granted, he rushed to the bookcases and returned with Volume One of the “Stoddard Lectures.”“See!” he cried triumphantly. “It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too — didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”

“What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?”

“Hae you got everything you need in the shape of-of tea?”

“Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...”

“A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up towards the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.”

“I’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor”

“interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end”

“all the time something within her was crying for a decision.She wanted her life shaped now, immediately — and the decision must be made by some force — of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality — that was close at hand”

“The war spirit's getting into me again. I have a hundred years of Ohio love behind me and I'm going to bomb out this trench.”

“I was looking at it again, through Daisy’s eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.”

“For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever”

“His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was”

“He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.”

“I was too absorbed to be responsive”

“His hand took hold of hers, and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. 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.”

“The failure and the success both believe in their hearts that they have accurately balanced points of view, the success because he's succeeded, and the failure because he's failed. The successful man tells his son to profit by his father's good fortune, and the failure tells his son to profit by his father's mistakes.”

“Gloria was sure she wanted but to read and dream and be fed tomato sandwiches and lemonades by some angelic servant”

“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.”

“She plucked a twig and broke it, but she found no spring in it.”

“Another dawn flung itself across the river; a belated taxi hurried along the street, its lamps still shining like burning eyes in a face white from a nights' carouse.”

“Don't be so anxious about it,' she laughed. 'I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do; I never got the trick of it.' She looked down at him, shy and fatigued. 'So here we are. I told you years ago that I had the makings of Cinderella.'He took her hand; she drew it back instinctively and then replaced it in his. 'Beg your pardon. Not even used to being touched. But I'm not afraid of you, if you stay quiet and don't move suddenly.”

“O ümitlerdir ki şimdi sefer etmekteyiz, biz o akıntıya karşı giden tekneler, durmadan geriye geçmişe çarpılıp atılsak da ne gam..”

“And so we beat on, books against the critics, borne back ceaslessly into rewrites.”

“Actually that’s my secret — I can’t even talk about you to anybody because I don’t want any more people to know how wonderful you are.”

“At first I was surprised and confused; then as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or speak hour upon hour it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested--interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which everyone has some vague right at the end.”

“I read somewhere that the sun's getting hotter every year," said Tom genially. "It seems that pretty soon the earth's going to fall into the sun--or wait a minute--it's just the opposite--the sun's getting colder every year." 1925”

“How I feel is that if I wanted anything I'd take it. That's what I've always thought all my life. But it happens that I want you, and so I just haven't room for any other desires.”

“A girl who could send tear-stained telegrams.”

“The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We've done that for so long that we've forgotten there's any other way.”

“Não há beleza sem dor, sem o sentimento de que estão a desaparecer homens, nomes, livros, casas - destinadas ao pó, mortais...”

“Julgava ela que eu sabia muito, porque sabia coisas que ela ignorava...”

“O Gatsby acreditava na luz verde, no orgíaco futuro que, ano após ano, foge e recua diante de nós. Se hoje nos iludiu, pouco importa: amanhã correremos mais depressa, alongaremos mais os braços...Até que uma bela manhã...Assim vamos teimando, proas contra a corrente, incessantemente cortando as águas, a caminho do passado.”

“Once we were one person, and always it will be a little that way.”

“Doctor Dougall was wrong. It was tempermentally impossible for Amory to get the best marks in school.”

“Rich girls don't marry poor boys, Jay Gatsby”

“Stahr's eyes and Kathleen's met and tangled. For an instant they made love as no one ever dares to do after. Their glance was slower than an embrace, more urgent than a call.”

“The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alivewith chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names.”

“It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.”

“Most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don't in the beginning.”

“He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back anymore. The gates were closed, the sun was down, and there was no beauty left but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of youth, of illusion, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.”

“And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”