F. Scott Fitzgerald

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.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

It was about then [1920] that I wrote a line which certain people will not let me forget: "She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven."

The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.

But you can love more than just one person, can't you?

A sudden gust of rain blew over them and then another - as if small liquid clouds were bouncing along the land. Lightning entered the sea far off and the air blew full of crackling thunder. The table cloths blew around the pillars. They blew and blew and blew. The flags twisted around the red chairs like live things, the banners were ragged, the corners of the table tore off through the burbling billowing ends of the cloths.

They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two: the passion of their pretense created the actuality. Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression-- yet it was probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarecly tolerated guest at a party she was giving.

You are mysterious, I love you. You’re beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous, and that’s the rarest known combination.

First, he realized that the sea was blue and that there was an enormous quantity of it, and that it roared and roared-really all the banalities about the ocean that one could realize, but if any one had told him then that these things were banalities, he would have gaped in wonder.

It's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be.

There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.

Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy.

It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.

Ah," she cried, "you look so cool." Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space. With an effort she glanced down at the table. You always look so cool," she repeated. She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw.

The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties, and the unclear voices of children, already gathered like crikets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight.

So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. 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.

A classic,' suggested Anthony, 'is a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then it's safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. It's acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashion.

You can’t repeat the past.” “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!

I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.