“It’s just that I
feel so sad these wonderful nights. I sort of feel they’re never coming again,
and I’m not really getting all I could out of them.” This
Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Youth is like having
a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple
state they were in before they ate the candy. They don’t. They just want the
fun of eating it all over again. The matron doesn’t want to repeat her girlhood
— she wants to repeat her honeymoon. I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I
want the pleasure of losing it again.” F.
Scott Fitzgerald, in This Side of Paradise
“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.” F.
Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
“There was one of his
lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat,
aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption
with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time
rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully - assuaged only by that conviction that
there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally
valueless.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“It was a gray day,
that least fleshly of all weathers; a day of dreams and far hopes and clear
visions. It was a day associated with those abstract truths and purities that
dissolve in the sunshine or fade out in the light of the moon.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
“Youth is like having
a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple
state they were in before they ate the candy. They don’t. They just want the
fun of eating it all over again.” F.
Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
“…it was only the
past that ever seemed strange and unbelievable.” F. Scott Fitzgerald,
This Side of Paradise
“Out of the deep
sophistication of Anthony an understanding formed, nothing atavistic or obscure,
indeed scarcely physical at all, an understanding remembered from the
romancings of many generations of minds that as she talked and caught his eyes
and turned her lovely head, she moved him as he had never been moved before.
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, the fragment of a sentence, to that part
of him that cherished all beauty and all illusion.”- F. Scott Fitzgerald , The Beautiful and the Damned
For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too
early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you
want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can
make the best or worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you
see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I
hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you have a life
you’re proud of. If you find you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start
all over again.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“This is a valley of
ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and
grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising
smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and
already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars
crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest,
and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an
impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“She felt a little
betrayed and sad, but presently a moving object came into sight. It was a huge
horse-chestnut tree in full bloom bound for the Champs Elysees, strapped now
into a long truck and simply shaking with laughter - like a lovely person in an
undignified position yet confident none the less of being lovely. Looking at it
with fascination, Rosemary identified herself with it, and laughed cheerfully
with it, and everything all at once seemed gorgeous.” Tender
is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
“And so with the
sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things
grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning
over again with the summer.” The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
“He wanted to recover
something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His
life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return
to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what
that thing was.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The
Great Gatsby
“Life is so damned
hard, so damned hard… It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it
hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever any more. That’s the last and worst
thing it does.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The
Beautiful and Damned.
“It was always the
becoming he dreamed of, never the being.” —F.
Scott Fitzgerald
“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 romantic person has a desperate
confidence that they won’t” F. Scott Fitzgerald - This Side of Paradise
“Life starts all over
again when it gets crisp in the fall.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my
heart where God put it, on the inside.” F.
Scott Fitzgerald
“I want to give a
really BAD party. I mean it. I want to give a party where there’s a brawl and
seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passed out
in the cabinet de toilette. You wait and see.” Dick Diver, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night
“You’re the only girl
I’ve seen for a long time that actually did look like something blooming.” F.
Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
“…and there was never
any doubt at whom he was looking or talking — and this was flattering
attention, for who looks at us? — glances fall upon us, curious or
disinterested, nothing more.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
“I hope she’ll be a fool - that’s the best thing a girl can
be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Don’t let yourself
feel worthless: often through life you will really be at your worst when you
seem to think best of yourself; and don’t worry about losing your
“personality,” as you persist in calling it: at fifteen you had the radiance of
early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of
the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden
warmth of 4 p.m.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
“She doesn’t think;
her real depths are Irish and romantic and illogical.” Tender is the Night, F. Scott
Fitzgerald
“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.” — F.
Scott Fitzgerald
“And so with the
sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things
grow fast in movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning
over again with the summer.” F.
Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
“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.” — F.
Scott Fitzgerald
“If we could only
learn to look evil as evil, whether it’s clothed in filth or monotony or
magnificence.” This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald
“You see I usually
find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the
sad things that happened to me.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“The world exists in
your eyes only. You can make it as big or as small as you want.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“For what it’s worth:
it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be.
There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same,
there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I
hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I
hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a
different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find
that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.” F.
Scott Fitzgerald
“It seemed that the
only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream.” F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Beautiful and Damned.
“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.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“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
“In the dead white
hours in Zurich staring into a stranger’s pantry across the upshine of a
street-lamp, 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.” Tender
is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
“There’s so much
spring in the air - there’s so much lazy sweetness in your heart.” This Side of Paradise by F. Scott
Fitzgerald
“I tried to go then,
but they wouldn’t hear of it; perhaps my presence made them feel more
satisfactorily alone.” The Great Gatsby
“It’s just that I
feel so sad these wondrous nights. I sort of feel they’re never coming again,
and I’m not really getting all I could out of them.” F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Life starts all over
again when it gets crisp in the fall.” F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
“In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three
o’clock in the morning, day after day.” F.
Scott Fitzgerald.