F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes

He looked at her and for a moment she lived in the bright blue worlds of his eyes, eagerly and confidently.

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.

It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream.

And Yale is November, crisp and energetic.

I have asked a lot of my emotions-one hundred and twenty stories. The price was high, right up with Kipling, because there was one little drop of something, not blood, not a tear, not my seed, but me more intimately than these, in every story, it was the extra I had. Now it has gone and I am just like you now.

Even when everything seems rotten you can't trust that judgment. It's the sum of all your judgments that counts.

Their lips brushed like young wild flowers in the wind.

He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths - so that he could 'come over' some afternoon to a stranger's garden.

A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.

Take off that darn fur coat!...Or maybe you'd like to have us open all the windows.

They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two.

that voice was a deathless song.

You've got an awfully kissable mouth.

The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.

They're a rotten crowd', I shouted across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.

You can take Hollywood for granted like I did, or you can dismiss it with the contempt we reserve for what we don't understand. It can be understood too, but only dimly and in flashes. Not half a dozen men have ever been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads.

Every act of life, from the morning toothbrush to the friend at dinner, became an effort. I hated the night when I couldn't sleep and I hated the day because it went toward night.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two: the passion of their pretense created the actuality. Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression-- yet it was probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarecly tolerated guest at a party she was giving.

It was too late - everything was too late. For years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable as water.

Life is progressive, no matter what our intentions.

What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.

He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

As he took her hand she saw him look her over from head to foot, a gesture she recognized and that made her feel at home, but gave her always a faint feeling of superiority to whoever made it. If her person was property she could exercise whatever advantage was inherent in its ownership.

No decent career was ever founded on a public.

Amory wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a boy marked for glory, and when faces of the throng turned toward him and ambiguous eyes stared into his, he assumed the most romantic of expressions and walked on the air cushions that lie on the asphalts of fourteen.

Eighteen might look at thirty-four through a rising mist of adolescence, but twenty-two would see thirty-eight with discerning clarity.

It is not merely enough to have the ability to be persistant, you must also have the ability to start over.

God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me, but you can't fool God!

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

Any person with any imagination is bound to be afraid.

Dear, don't think of getting out of bed yet. I've always suspected that early rising in early life makes one nervous.

I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry.

Forgotten is forgiven.

There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind.

I learned a little of beauty - enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth.

There has never been an American tragedy. There have only been great failures.

Never walk near the bed; to a ghost your ankle is your most vulnerable part-once in bed, you're safe; he may lie around under the bed all night, but you're safe as daylight. If you still have doubts pull the blanket over your head.

I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.

So we'll just let things take their course, and never be sorry.

Rosemary felt that this swim would become the typical one of her life, the one that would always pop up in her memory at the mention of swimming.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

We all must try to be good.

The Montana sunset lay between the mountains like a giant bruise from which darkened arteries spread across a poisoned sky.

I can’t exactly describe how I feel but it’s not quite right. And it leaves me cold.

Very few of the people who accentuate the futility of life remark the futility of themselves. Perhaps they think that in proclaiming the evil of living they somehow salvage their own worth from the ruin - but they don't, even you and I.

The hangover became a part of the day as well allowed-for as the Spanish siesta.

He dispensed starlight to casual moths.