Grown-ups didn't seem to realize that for me, as for most other schoolboys, it was easier to keep silent than to speak. I was a natural oyster.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

My dream had become my reality: my old life was a discarded husk.

Readers tend to devour short stories on a newssheet, but would be disinclined to read them in collections

You insisted on thinking of them as angels, even if they were fallen angels.

Mr. Scott Fitzgerald deserves a good shaking. Here is an unmistakable talent unashamed of making itself a motley to the view. The Great Gatsby is an absurd story, whether considered as romance, melodrama, or plain record of New York high life.

It's better to write about things you feel than about things you know about.