Quotes From "The Great Gatsby" By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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. F. Scott Fitzgerald

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library. F. Scott Fitzgerald

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men. F. Scott Fitzgerald

Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home. F. Scott Fitzgerald

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. F. Scott Fitzgerald

I love her and that's the beginning and end of everything. F. Scott Fitzgerald

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart. F. Scott Fitzgerald

There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. 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. . F. Scott Fitzgerald

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. F. Scott Fitzgerald

They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. F. Scott Fitzgerald

I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life. F. Scott Fitzgerald

I wouldn't ask too much of her, ' I ventured. 'You can't change the past.'' Can't change the past?' he cried incredulously. 'Why of course you can! F. Scott Fitzgerald

I wouldn't ask too much of her, " I ventured. "You can't change the past."" Can't change the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can! F. Scott Fitzgerald

He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. F. Scott Fitzgerald

I was alone again in the unquiet darkness. F. Scott Fitzgerald

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 ... No -- Gatsby turned out all right in the end; it was what prayed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and the short-winded elations of men. F. Scott Fitzgerald

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that registered earthquakes ten thousand miles away. F. Scott Fitzgerald

Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization. F. Scott Fitzgerald

Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees–he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder. F. Scott Fitzgerald

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun. F. Scott Fitzgerald

I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. F. Scott Fitzgerald

Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete. F. Scott Fitzgerald

The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald

My own rule is to let everything alone. F. Scott Fitzgerald

As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way and denied so vehemently an knowledge of his movements that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table--the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone. F. Scott Fitzgerald

Thirty--the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. F. Scott Fitzgerald

One emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture. F. Scott Fitzgerald

I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. F. Scott Fitzgerald

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures. F. Scott Fitzgerald

But there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. F. Scott Fitzgerald

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. F. Scott Fitzgerald

...and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires F. Scott Fitzgerald

Whenever you feel like criticzing any one, " he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven´t had the advantages that you've had. F. Scott Fitzgerald