He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.

mother says that two souls are sometimes created together and--and in love before they're born.

No one person in the world is necessary to you or to me.

Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.

Though the Jazz Age continued it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the elders.

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that registered earthquakes ten thousand miles away.

I hope you live a life you're proud of...