It takes a genius to whine appealingly.

At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion.

I want you to take a red-hot bath as hot as you can bear it, and just relax your nerves. You can read in the tub if you wish.

There is a moment—Oh, just before the first kiss, a whispered word—something that makes it worth while.

The farmers may be the backbone of the country, but who wants to be a backbone?

You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.

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.