A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big. |
After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eye’s power of correction. |
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. |
Always willing to lend a helping hand to the one above him. |
An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards. |
And it occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well. |
Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can! |
Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor |
Either you think or else others have to think for you and take power from you. |
Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness. |
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past |
Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men. |
Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock....his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him. |
Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes. |
Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind. |