His youth seemed never so vanished as now in the contrast between the utter loneliness of this visit and that riotous, joyful party of four years before. Things that had been the merest commonplaces of his life then, deep sleep, the sense of beauty around him, all desire, had flown away and the gaps they left were filled only with the great listlessness of his disillusion.

sometimes i wish i'd been an englishman; american life is so damned dumb and stupid and healthy

i was perhaps an egotist in youth, but i soon found it made me morbid to think too much about myself

Kiss me now, love me now.

I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

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