In the morning you were never violently sorry-- you made no resolutions, but if you had overdone it and your heart was slightly out of order, you went on the wagon for a few days without saying anything about it, and waited until an accumulation of nervous boredom projected you into another party.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

I hope something happens. I'm restless as the devil and have a horror of getting fat or falling in love and growing domestic.

The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty.

You will walk differently alone, dear, through a thicker atmosphere, forcing your way through the shadows of chairs, through the dripping smoke of the funnels. You will feel your own reflection sliding along the eyes of those who look at you. You are no longer insulated; but I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it.

I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

It was too late - everything was too late. For years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable as water.