It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.

Books are like brothers. I am an only child. Gatsby [is] my imaginary eldest brother.

There are no second acts in American lives.

Their lips brushed like young wild flowers in the wind.

It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty.

After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

No decent career was ever founded on a public.