The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.

New friends can often have a better time together than old friends.

I found something! Courage–just that; courage as a rule of life and something to cling to always.

I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others–young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.

That most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man”.

These things excite me so,’ she whispered. ‘If you want to kiss me any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know and I’ll be glad to arrange it for you. Just mention my...

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.

Here’s to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.

Even when the east excited me most, even when I was keenly aware of its superiority to the broad, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which only spared children and the...

That’s going to be your trouble — judgment about yourself.(Tender is the Night)

You see, this is the beauty I want. Beauty has got to be astonishing, astounding–it’s got to burst in on you like a dream, like the exquisite eyes of a girl.

I want to be able to do anything with words: handle slashing, flaming descriptions like Wells, and use the paradox with the clarity of Samuel Butler, the breadth of Bernard Shaw and the wit of...

Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.

The grass is full of ghosts tonight.’ ‘The whole campus is alive with them.’ They paused by Little and watched the moon rise, to make silver of the slate roof of Dodd and blue the...

Now he realized the truth: that sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. It was like a great elective office, it was like an inheritance of power – to certain people at certain times an essential...

Who is he anyhow, an actor?””No.””A dentist?””…No, he’s a gambler.” Gatsby hesitated, then added cooly: “He’s the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919.””Fixed the World Series?” I repeated.The idea staggered me. I...

This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children’s eyes. From the western half of the...

I’m not sentimental–I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know,is that the sentimental person thinks things will last–the romanticperson has a desperate confidence that they won’t.

So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.

Writers aren’t exactly people…. They’re a whole bunch of people trying to be one person.

There are always those to whom all self-revelation is contemptible, unless it ends with a noble thanks to the gods for the Unconquerable Soul.

We’ll all be failures?””Yes. I don’t mean only money failures, but just sort of – of ineffectual and sad, and – oh, how can I tell you?

Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply.

This selfishness is not only part of me. It is the most living part.It is somehow transcending rather than by avoiding that selfishness that I can bring poise and balance into my life.

I just think of people,” she continued, “whether they seem right where they are and fit into a picture. I don’t mind if they don’t do anything. I don’t see why they should; in fact...

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man , more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road. ‘How do you get to West Egg village?’ he asked helplessly....

It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.

my imagination persisted in sticking horrors into the dark- so I stuck my imagination into the dark instead, and let it look out at me.

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.

It’s all life is. Just going ’round kissing people.

Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.

Their lips brushed like young wild flowers in the wind.

I’ve always looked on criticism as a sort of envious tribute.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy — one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have...

One night they walked while the moon rose and poured a great burden of glory over the garden until it seemed fairyland with Amory and Eleanor, dim phantasmal shapes, expressing eternal beauty and curious elfin...

I went in – after making every possible noise in the kitchen, short of pushing over the stove – but I don’t believe they heard a sound. They were sitting at either end of the...

Always, after he was in bed, there were voices – indefinite, fading, enchanting – just outside his window, and before he fell asleep he would dream one of his favorites waking dreams.

Each night when she prepared for bed she smeared her face with some new unguent which she hoped illogically would give back the glow and freshness to her vanishing beauty.

The unwelcome November rain had perversely stolen the day’s last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence, the night.

C’mon, Amory. Your romance is overYou don’t know how true you spoke. No idea. ‘At’s the whole trouble

By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me. They meet all kinds of crazy fish.

Actually that’s my secret — I can’t even talk about you to anybody because I don’t want any more people to know how wonderful you are.

What are you going to do? “Can’t say – run for president, write -” “Greenwich Village?” “Good heavens, no – I said write – not drink.

The sheath that held her soul had assumed significance – that was all. She was a sun, radiant, growing, gathering light and storing it – then after an eternity pouring it forth in a glance,...

And in the end, we were all just humans.. drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.

Understand now, I’m purely a fiction writer and do not profess to be an earnest student of political science, but I believe strongly that such a law as one prohibiting liquor is foolish, and all...

Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.

He had seen me several times, and had intended to call on me long before, but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it.

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun.