You don’t know what a trial it is to be —like me. I've got to keep my face like steel in the street to keep men from winking at me.

There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.

You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word.

That familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She's too pretty.