His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

That however the brains and abilities of men may differ, their stomachs are essentially the same.

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

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

A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about.

My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.