What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?

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.

Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again.

The faces of most American women over thirty are relief maps of petulant and bewildered unhappiness.

I guess I'm the Black Death,' he said slowly. 'I don't seem to bring people happiness any more.

...one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture.

I want to give a really BAD party. I mean it. I want to give a party where there’s a brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passed out in the cabinet de toilette. You wait and see.