“I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.”

“I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.”

“And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.”

“I want to tell you about your heart— you've probably been neglecting your heart—and you don’t know.”

“He's sensitive and I don't want him to break his heart over somebody who doesn't care about him.”

“I am too much a moralist at heart, and really want to preach at people in some acceptable form, rather than entertain them.”

“At this point Jordan and I tried to go, but Tom and Gatsby insisted with competitive firmness that we remain - as though neither of them had anything to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake vicariously of their emotions.”