in crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each other's eyes

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.

I had traded the fight against love for the fight against loneliness, the fight against life for the fight against death.

You can take Hollywood for granted like I did, or you can dismiss it with the contempt we reserve for what we don't understand. It can be understood too, but only dimly and in flashes. Not half a dozen men have ever been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads.

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people's luck.

I'll drink your champagne. I'll drink every drop of it, I don't care if it kills me.

Young people do not perceive at once that the giver of wounds is the enemy and the quoted tattle merely the arrow.