This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
F. Scott Fitzgerald...their eyes are full of kindness as each feels the full effect of novelty after a short separation. They are drawing a relaxation from each other's presence, a new serenity.
F. Scott FitzgeraldHe did not understand all he had heard, but from his clandestine glimpse into the privacy of these two, with all the world that his short experience could conceive of at their feet, he had gathered that life for everybody was a struggle, sometimes magnificent from a distance, but always difficult and surprisingly simple and a little sad.
F. Scott FitzgeraldSheโs got an indiscreet voice,โ I remarked. โItโs full of-โ I hesitated. โHer voice is full of money,โ he said suddenly. That was it. Iโd never understood before. It was full of money-that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbalsโ song of it.
F. Scott Fitzgerald