Once a change of direction has begun, even though it's the wrong one, it still tends to clothe itself as thoroughly in the appurtenances of Tightness as if it had been a natural all along.

I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.

I don't care about truth. I want some happiness.

From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

There's no substitute for will. Sometimes you have to fake will when you don't feel it at all.

He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real.