Following Fitzgerald: August 2014

The sadness of the past

“The sadness of the past is with me always.” F. Scott Fitzgerald to Zelda Fitzgerald.

So he tasted the deep pain

“So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.” All the Sad Young Men

“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.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

Her philosophy is

“Her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others.” This Side of Paradise

“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…”

“Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.”

“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”

“In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o' clock in the morning, day after day.”

“Writers aren't exactly people...they're a whole lot of people trying to be one person.”

“The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want.”

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

“Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.”

“An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.”

“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”

“...he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.”

"Sudden revulsion seized Amory, disgust, loathing for the whole incident. He desired frantically to be away, never to see Myra again, never to kiss anyone; he became conscious of his face and hers, of their clinging hands, and he wanted to creep out of his body and hide somewhere safe out of sight, up in the corner of his mind."

LLR Books

The sadness of the past

So he tasted the deep pain

I fell in love

Her philosophy is