So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
I hope she’ll be a fool. That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.
I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.
I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.
Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy.
You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
I’m a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires.
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened – then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
He used to think that he wanted to be good, he wanted to be kind, he wanted to be brave and wise, but it was all pretty difficult. He wanted to be loved, too, if he could fit it in.
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.