The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.

So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star.

Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement. Discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.

the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions.

You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.

I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.

I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.