And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I donโt care what itโs founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reactionโGatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.
F. Scott FitzgeraldNo amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
F. Scott FitzgeraldI see you're looking at my cuff buttons." I hadn't been looking at them, but I did now.
F. Scott FitzgeraldAnd that taught me you can't have anything, you can't have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It's like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it - but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you've got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone.
F. Scott Fitzgerald