There was no God in his heart, he knew; his ideas were still in riot; there was ever the pain of memory; the regret for his lost youth-yet the waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul, responsibility and a love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealized dreams...... And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he had determined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from the personalities he had passed... He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky. I know myself," he cried, "but that is all.
F. Scott FitzgeraldI think they're very attractive,' Abe agreed. 'I just don't think they're attractive, that's all.
F. Scott FitzgeraldThereโs a writer for you,โ he said. โKnows everything and at the same time he knows nothing.โ [narrator]It was my first inkling that he was a writer. And while I like writersโbecause if you ask a writer anything you usually get an answerโstill it belittled him in my eyes. Writers arenโt people exactly. Or, if theyโre any good, theyโre a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. Itโs like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward tryingโonly to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.
F. Scott FitzgeraldI see you're looking at my cuff buttons." I hadn't been looking at them, but I did now.
F. Scott FitzgeraldThat however the brains and abilities of men may differ, their stomachs are essentially the same.
F. Scott FitzgeraldNow he realized the truth: that sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. It was like a great elective office, it was like an inheritance of power - to certain people at certain times an essential luxury, carrying with it not a guarantee but a responsibility, not a security but an infinite risk. Its very momentum might drag him down to ruin - the passing of the emotional wave that made it possible might leave the one who made it high and dry forever on an island of despair...Sacrifice by its very nature was arrogant and impersonal; sacrifice should be eternally supercilious.
F. Scott Fitzgerald