There was not a moving up into vacated places; there was simply an anachronistic staying on between a vanishing past and an incalculable future.

How I feel is that if I wanted anything I'd take it. That's what I've always thought all my life. But it happens that I want you, and so I just haven't room for any other desires.

I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him. [- Nick Carroway]

One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home.