Marriage was created not to be a background but to need one. Mine is going to be outstanding. It can't, shan't be the setting - it's going to be the performance, the lively, lovely, glamorous performance, and the world shall be the scenery.
Interpretation
Marriage should be a vibrant and central part of life, not just a backdrop.
In this quote, F. Scott Fitzgerald emphasizes that marriage should not merely serve as a passive backdrop to life but rather as an active and engaging performance. It suggests that one's relationship should be dynamic, exciting, and the focal point of one's existence, with the world as the supporting scenery that enhances the experience.
In practice
A wedding speech that highlights the importance of an exciting marriage.
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.
To mind being disliked by a woman you don’t desire and are not married to is yet another serious failure of common sense.
If you are a woman living, you've been done wrong by a man.
The way I go about it is that we should all be inviting people into our lives who don't look like us, speak like us and don't come from where we come from.
I've learned that my people are not the only ones oppressed... I have sung my songs all over the world and everywhere found that some common bond makes the people of all lands take to Negro songs as their own.
Everyone I have lost in the closing of a door the click of the lock is not forgotten, they do not die but remain within the soft edges of the earth, the ash of house fires and cancer in sin and forgiveness huddled under old blankets dreaming their way into my hands, my heart closing tight like fists. - "Indian Boy Love Song #1
It's not enough just to treat women well. We have to work to make sure all men treat women well.
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