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...

Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.

He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back...

An idea ran backward and forward in his head like a blind man, knocking over the solid furniture.

They had created themselves together, and they always saw themselves, their youth, their love, their lost youth and lost love, their failures and memories, as a sort of living fiction.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

In this couple defects were multiplied, as if by a dangerous doubling; weakness fed upon itself without a counterstrength and they were trapped, defaults, mutually committed, left holes everywhere in their lives. When you read...

We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can’t. Too many voices, too much scattered,...

For what it’s worth: it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you find you’re not, I hope you have the...

I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.

My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

…Baltimore. It’s imperfect. Boy, is it imperfect. And there are parts of its past that make you wince. It’s not all marble steps and waitresses calling you ‘hon,’ you know. Racial strife in the sixties,...

I want you to lie to me just as sweetly as you know how for the rest of my life.

Scott is gone.I’ve had two days with this truth. This truth and me, we’re acquainted now, past the shock of our first unhappy meeting and into the uneasy-cohabitation stage. Its barbs are slightly duller than...

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.

He was changed as completely as Amory Blaine could ever be changed. Amory plus Beatrice plus two years in Minneapolis – these had been his ingredients when he entered St. Regis’. But the Minneapolis years...

I had a strong sudden instinct that I must be alone. I didn’t want to see any people at all. I had seen so many people all my life — I was an average mixer,...