At fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon.

I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

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

The transition from libertine to prig was so complete.

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.

I was in love with a whirlwind, so when the girl threw me over, I went home and finished my novel.

What a wonderful song, she thought-everything was wonderful tonight, most of all this romantic scene in the den with their hands clinging and the inevitable looming charmingly close. The future vista of her life seemed an unending succession of scenes like this: under moonlight and pale starlight, and in the backs of warm limousines and in low cosy roadsters stopped under sheltering trees-only the boy might change, and this one was so nice.