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’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor

Art isn't meaningless... It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.

He had no plans, no definite intentions, except to kiss her lips again, to hold her in his arms.

So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.

When a man is tired of life on his 21st birthday it indicates that he is rather tired of something in himself.

Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.