He found himself remembering how on one summer morning they two had started from New York in search of happiness. They had never expected to find it, perhaps, yet in itself that quest had been happier than anything he expected forevermore. Life, it seemed, must be a setting up of props around one - otherwise it was disaster. There was no rest, no quiet. He had been futile in longing to drift and dream, no one drifted except to maelstroms, no one dreamed, without his dreams becoming fantastic nightmares of indecision and regret.
F. Scott FitzgeraldThe truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of Godโa phrase which, if it means anything, means just thatโand he must be about His Fatherโs Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty.
F. Scott Fitzgerald