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F. Scott Fitzgerald In Drag: Vintage Photo Of Author In Women's Costume Surfaces
A vintage photo
of F. Scott Fitzgerald in full drag is making the blogosphere rounds.
Buzzfeed reports that the
photo was snapped in 1916 when the future "Great Gatsby" scribe was
in his third year at Princeton University. Fitzgerald was then performing a
play called "The Evil Eye," which he also wrote the lyrics for, with
a musical-comedy troupe known as the Princeton Triangle Club.
View the photo
below:
F. Scott Fitzgerald Responds to Hate Mail
"The Rosseaus, Marxes, Tolstois – men of thought, mind
you, 'impractical' men, 'idealist' have done more to decide the food you eat
and the things you think + do than all the millions of Roosevelts and
Rockerfellars."
F. Scott Fitzgerald – literary legend, master of the muse,
star of early book ads, and one amazing dad – was born 116 years ago this week.
In 1920, shortly after the publication of his debut novel,
This Side of Paradise, he received a piece of "hate mail" criticizing
the book as an affront to the respectable members of society, particularly
those in power. Fitzgerald's feisty, brilliant response, found in F. Scott
Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters (public library), pulls into question – just as
his fiction famously does – the superficial values high society holds so dear,
touching on everything from education to ethics to politics to creative legacy
with equal parts insight and irreverence:
TO: Robert D. Clark
38 W 59th St.
New York City
Feb 9th 1920
Dear Bob:
Your letter riled me to such an extent that I'm answering
immediatly. Who are all these 'real people' who 'create business and politics'?
and of whose approval I should be so covetous? Do you mean grafters who keep
sugar in their ware houses so that people have to go without or the cheap-jacks
who by bribery and high-school sentiment manage to controll elections. I can't
pick up a paper here without finding that some of these 'real people' who will
not be satisfied only with 'a brilliant mind' (I quote you) have just gone up
to Sing Sing for a stay – Brindell and Hegerman, two pillars of society, went
this morning.
Who in hell ever respected Shelley, Whitman, Poe, O. Henry,
Verlaine, Swinburne, Villon, Shakespeare ect when they were alive. Shelley +
Swinburne were fired from college; Verlaine + O Henry were in jail. The rest
were drunkards or wasters and told generally by the merchants and petty
politicians and jitney messiahs of their day that real people wouldn't stand it
And the merchants and messiahs, the shrewd + the dull, are dust – and the
others live on.
Just occasionally a man like Shaw who was called an immoralist
50 times worse than me back in the 90ties, lives on long enough so that the
world grows up to him. What he believed in 1890 was heresy then – by by now its
almost respectable. It seems to me I've let myself be dominated by
'authorities' for too long – the headmaster of Newman, S.P. A, Princeton, my
regiment, my business boss – who knew no more than me, in fact I should say
these 5 were all distinctly my mental inferiors. And that's all that counts!
The Rosseaus, Marxes, Tolstois – men of thought, mind you, 'impractical' men,
'idealist' have done more to decide the food you eat and the things you think +
do than all the millions of Roosevelts and Rockerfellars that strut for 20 yrs.
or so mouthing such phrases as 100% American (which means 99% village idiot),
and die with a little pleasing flattery to the silly and cruel old God they've
set up in their hearts.
'Gatsby' Author Fitzgerald Rests In A D.C. Suburb
Every weekday, thousands of commuters to the nation's capital drive past the grave of a celebrated American author, and it's a good bet they don't realize it.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, was born in St. Paul, Minn.; he's associated with that city, as well as Paris, the Riviera and New York. But he's buried in Rockville, Md., outside Washington, D.C., next to a highway between strip malls and train tracks.
Scott Fitzgerald, as he was known, was the prime chronicler of the Jazz Age of the Roaring '20s. He wrote of insouciant youth, flappers and millionaires — a postwar generation of young Americans skeptical of its elders and eager to embrace a prosperous age.
With his wife, Zelda, Fitzgerald became an emblem of the era, living out many of its excesses. His first novel, This Side of Paradise, begun while he was an undergraduate at Princeton University, earned acclaim among critics and instantly brought the author wealth and notoriety.
He followed that with The Beautiful and the Damned and The Great Gatsby, one of the most celebrated books of American literature. Gatsby was followed by two other novels and 180 short stories.
But Fitzgerald's heavy drinking took a toll on his health and wealth, as well as his critical reputation. He died at age 44 of a heart attack, while writing screenplays in Hollywood.
From California To Maryland
At the time of his death, Fitzgerald considered himself a failure. After the Great Depression, readers and publishers were no longer interested in tales of the Jazz Age, and he was hard-pressed to find his novels on bookstore shelves.
When he died unexpectedly before Christmas in 1940, Fitzgerald's wife and his lawyer arranged for his body to be sent from California to Maryland, to be buried next to his father in a family plot at St. Mary's Catholic Church.
The writer's family had deep roots in the state; he's named after distant relative and Maryland native Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Writer Maureen Corrigan has visited Fitzgerald's grave often. The book critic for WHYY's Fresh Air is also a professor of literature at Georgetown University and gets her car fixed at a garage near the Rockville cemetery.
Corrigan says she always finds fresh gifts and tokens next to the grave.
"The two things that I've seen almost consistently at the gravesite," she says, "are small bottles of alcohol, that you would get on an airplane, and spare change."
Parallels With 'Gatsby'
Corrigan is at work on a book about how Americans read The Great Gatsby. She finds eerie similarities in Fitzgerald's burial and that of his most famous character.
Fitzgerald was initially refused burial at St. Mary's, on the grounds that he wasn't a "practicing" Catholic at his death. Instead, after an impersonal service, he was interred at another cemetery nearby.
"It was raining," says Corrigan, "and there were about 25 people, so he got more than Gatsby. But the Protestant minister who performed the service didn't know who he was. So when you read Gatsby's burial, you really do get a chill, because it almost seems to anticipate what would happen to the author."
And as for a grave marker for this landmark American author?
"I doubt there was one," says his granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan. "He was totally broke when he died. I don't think anyone had much money to spend on a gravestone."
Lanahan's mother, Scottie, was the Fitzgeralds' only child. In family pictures, Scottie looks likes a third Musketeer to her dashing parents.
Eventually, Zelda Fitzgerald was institutionalized in Maryland for mental illness; her husband and daughter moved nearby. Lanahan says Zelda wrote that her husband "always thought he'd be going back to the rolling hills of Maryland."
Indeed, Fitzgerald wrote a friend, "I wouldn't mind a bit if Zelda and I could snuggle up under a stone in some old graveyard here."
'Borne Back ... Into The Past'
Seven years after his death, Zelda did join him in that cemetery, after she died in a fire at an asylum. Their graves were virtually forgotten for almost three decades, until a local women's group contacted Scottie about erecting a plaque.
Instead, the group and Scottie approached St. Mary's again, 35 years after Fitzgerald had been turned away. The church agreed to allow the couple to be moved into the family plot.
This time, there was a headstone, chosen by Scottie, with the famous last words of The Great Gatsby inscribed on it: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Corrigan reads that last line as a challenge to Americans.
"What those last lines are asking us to think about," she says, "is whether or not it's a worthless effort to try to get ahead, run faster, be stronger, in light of the fact that ultimately we all die and are pulled back into the past, or whether that's what makes us great, that we do try."
In 1986, Scottie Fitzgerald was buried with her parents in the family plot at St. Mary's. Her grave is at their feet.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, was born in St. Paul, Minn.; he's associated with that city, as well as Paris, the Riviera and New York. But he's buried in Rockville, Md., outside Washington, D.C., next to a highway between strip malls and train tracks.
Scott Fitzgerald, as he was known, was the prime chronicler of the Jazz Age of the Roaring '20s. He wrote of insouciant youth, flappers and millionaires — a postwar generation of young Americans skeptical of its elders and eager to embrace a prosperous age.
With his wife, Zelda, Fitzgerald became an emblem of the era, living out many of its excesses. His first novel, This Side of Paradise, begun while he was an undergraduate at Princeton University, earned acclaim among critics and instantly brought the author wealth and notoriety.
He followed that with The Beautiful and the Damned and The Great Gatsby, one of the most celebrated books of American literature. Gatsby was followed by two other novels and 180 short stories.
But Fitzgerald's heavy drinking took a toll on his health and wealth, as well as his critical reputation. He died at age 44 of a heart attack, while writing screenplays in Hollywood.
From California To Maryland
At the time of his death, Fitzgerald considered himself a failure. After the Great Depression, readers and publishers were no longer interested in tales of the Jazz Age, and he was hard-pressed to find his novels on bookstore shelves.
When he died unexpectedly before Christmas in 1940, Fitzgerald's wife and his lawyer arranged for his body to be sent from California to Maryland, to be buried next to his father in a family plot at St. Mary's Catholic Church.
The writer's family had deep roots in the state; he's named after distant relative and Maryland native Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Writer Maureen Corrigan has visited Fitzgerald's grave often. The book critic for WHYY's Fresh Air is also a professor of literature at Georgetown University and gets her car fixed at a garage near the Rockville cemetery.
Corrigan says she always finds fresh gifts and tokens next to the grave.
"The two things that I've seen almost consistently at the gravesite," she says, "are small bottles of alcohol, that you would get on an airplane, and spare change."
Parallels With 'Gatsby'
Corrigan is at work on a book about how Americans read The Great Gatsby. She finds eerie similarities in Fitzgerald's burial and that of his most famous character.
Fitzgerald was initially refused burial at St. Mary's, on the grounds that he wasn't a "practicing" Catholic at his death. Instead, after an impersonal service, he was interred at another cemetery nearby.
"It was raining," says Corrigan, "and there were about 25 people, so he got more than Gatsby. But the Protestant minister who performed the service didn't know who he was. So when you read Gatsby's burial, you really do get a chill, because it almost seems to anticipate what would happen to the author."
And as for a grave marker for this landmark American author?
"I doubt there was one," says his granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan. "He was totally broke when he died. I don't think anyone had much money to spend on a gravestone."
Lanahan's mother, Scottie, was the Fitzgeralds' only child. In family pictures, Scottie looks likes a third Musketeer to her dashing parents.
Eventually, Zelda Fitzgerald was institutionalized in Maryland for mental illness; her husband and daughter moved nearby. Lanahan says Zelda wrote that her husband "always thought he'd be going back to the rolling hills of Maryland."
Indeed, Fitzgerald wrote a friend, "I wouldn't mind a bit if Zelda and I could snuggle up under a stone in some old graveyard here."
'Borne Back ... Into The Past'
Seven years after his death, Zelda did join him in that cemetery, after she died in a fire at an asylum. Their graves were virtually forgotten for almost three decades, until a local women's group contacted Scottie about erecting a plaque.
Instead, the group and Scottie approached St. Mary's again, 35 years after Fitzgerald had been turned away. The church agreed to allow the couple to be moved into the family plot.
This time, there was a headstone, chosen by Scottie, with the famous last words of The Great Gatsby inscribed on it: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Corrigan reads that last line as a challenge to Americans.
"What those last lines are asking us to think about," she says, "is whether or not it's a worthless effort to try to get ahead, run faster, be stronger, in light of the fact that ultimately we all die and are pulled back into the past, or whether that's what makes us great, that we do try."
In 1986, Scottie Fitzgerald was buried with her parents in the family plot at St. Mary's. Her grave is at their feet.
The Evolution of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Signature: From 5 Years Old to 21
Fun fact about F. Scott Fitzgerald: he was a terrible
speller. No, really. And his grammar wasn’t much better. Literary critic Edmund
Wilson described his debut novel This Side of Paradise (find in our Free eBooks
collection) as “one of the most illiterate books of any merit every published.”
Hemingway couldn’t spell either, and neither could Faulkner. Without the
patient revision of great editors like Maxwell Perkins, much of the prose of
these American masters may well have been unreadable. Novelists are artists,
not grammarians, and their manuscript quirks—of spelling, handwriting,
grammatical mistakes—can often reveal a great deal more about them than the
typical reader can glean from clean, typeset copies of their work.
Take, for example, the evolution of Fitzgerald’s signature
(above). From the labored scrawls of a five year-old, to the practiced script
of an eleven-year-old schoolboy, to the experimental teenaged poses, we see the
lettering get looser, more stylized, then tighten up again as it assumes its
own mature identity in the confidently elegant near-calligraphy of the
21-year-old Fitzgerald–an evolution that traces the writer’s creative growth
from uncertain but passionate youth to disciplined artist. Alright, maybe
that’s all nonsense. I’m no expert. The practice of handwriting analysis, or
graphology, is generally a forensic tool used to identify the marks of criminal
suspects and detect forgeries, not a mindreading technique, although it does
get used that way. One site, for example, provides an analysis of one of
Fitzgerald’s 1924 letters to Carl Van Vechten. From the minute characteristics
of the Gatsby novelist’s script, the analyst divines that he is “creative,”
“artistic,” and appreciates the finer things in life. Color me a little skeptical.
But maybe there is something to my theory of Fitzgerald’s
growing maturity and self-conscious certainty as evidenced by his signatures.
He published This Side of Paradise to great acclaim three years after the final
signature above. In the prior signatures, we see him struggling for control as
he wrote and revised an earlier unpublished novel called The Romantic Egotist,
which Fitzgerald himself told editor Perkins was “a tedious, disconnected
casserole.” The outsized, extravagant lettering of the artist in his late teens
is nothing if not “romantic.” But Fitzgerald achieved just enough control in
his short life to write a veritable treasure chest of stories (many brilliant
and some just plain silly) and a handful of novels, including, of course, the one
for which he’s best known. Most of the rest of the time, as most everyone
knows, he was kind of a mess.
'Gatsby' Author Fitzgerald Rests In A D.C. Suburb
'Gatsby' Author Fitzgerald Rests In A D.C. Suburb
The grave of Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald lies
next to a major thoroughfare for commuters between Rockville, Md., and
Washington, D.C.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minn.; he's
associated with that city, as well with Paris, the Riviera, and New York. But
the author of The Great Gatsby is buried in suburban Maryland, next to a
highway between stripmalls and train tracks.
Fitzgerald's grave lies in Rockville, Md., and every
weekday, thousands of Washington, D.C., commuters drive past his grave, not
realizing the celebrated author is buried nearby.
Scott Fitzgerald, as he was known, was the prime chronicler
of the Jazz Age of the Roaring '20s. He wrote of insouciant youth, flappers and
millionaires — a postwar generation of young Americans skeptical of its elders
and eager to embrace a prosperous age.
With his wife Zelda, Fitzgerald became an emblem of the era,
living out many of its excesses. His first novel, This Side of Paradise, begun
while he was an undergraduate at Princeton University, earned acclaim among
critics and instantly brought the author wealth and notoriety.
He would follow that with The Beautiful and the Damned and
The Great Gatsby, one of the most celebrated books of American literature.
Gatsby was followed by two other novels and 180 short stories.
But Fitzgerald's heavy drinking took a toll on his health
and wealth, as well as his critical reputation. He died at age 44 of a heart
attack, while writing screenplays in Hollywood.
After the Great Depression, readers and publishers were no
longer interested in more tales of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald was hard-pressed to
find his novels on bookstore shelves. At the time of his death, he considered
himself a failure.
Fitzgerald's family had deep roots in Maryland. He was named
for distant relative Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star-Spangled
Banner."
When Fitzgerald died unexpectedly before Christmas in 1940,
his wife, Zelda, and his lawyer arranged for the writer's body to be sent from
California to Maryland, to be buried next to his father in a family plot at St.
Mary's Catholic Church.
Writer Maureen Corrigan has visited Fitzgerald's grave
often. The book critic for WHYY's Fresh Air is also a professor of literature
at Georgetown University, who comes to Rockville to get her car fixed at a
garage near the cemetery.
Corrigan says she always finds fresh gifts and tokens next
to the grave.
"The two things that I've seen almost consistently at
the gravesite," she says, "are small bottles of alcohol, that you
would get on an airplane, and spare change."
Corrigan is at work on a book about how Americans read The
Great Gatsby. She finds eerie similarities in Fitzgerald's burial and that of
his most famous character.
Fitzgerald was initially refused burial at St. Mary's, on
the grounds that he wasn't a "practicing" Catholic at his death.
Instead, after an impersonal service, he was interred at another cemetery
nearby.
"It was raining," says Corrigan, "and there
were about 25 people, so he got more than Gatsby. But the Protestant minister
who performed the service didn't know who he was. So when you read Gatsby's
burial, you really do get a chill, because it almost seems to anticipate what
would happen to the author."
And as for a grave marker for this landmark American author?
"I doubt there was one," says his granddaughter,
Eleanor Lanahan. "He was totally broke when he died. I don't think anyone
had much money to spend on a gravestone."
Lanahan's mother, Scottie, was Scott and Zelda's only child.
In family pictures, Scottie looks likes a Third Musketeer to her dashing
parents.
Eventually, Zelda's mental illness led to her being
institutionalized in Maryland; Scott and Scottie moved nearby. Granddaughter
Eleanor Lanahan says Zelda wrote that her husband "always thought he'd be
going back to the rolling hills of Maryland."
Indeed, Scott wrote a friend, "I wouldn't mind a bit if
Zelda and I could snuggle up under a stone in some old graveyard here."
Seven years later, Zelda did join him in that cemetery,
after she died in a fire at an asylum. Their graves were virtually forgotten
for almost three decades, until a local women's group contacted Scottie about
erecting a plaque at her parents' grave.
Instead, the group and Scottie approached St. Mary's Church
again, 35 years after Fitzgerald had been turned away. The church agreed to
allow Scott and Zelda to be moved into the family plot.
And this time there was a headstone, chosen by Scottie, with
the famous last words of The Great Gatsby inscribed on it: "So we beat on,
boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Corrigan reads that last line as a challenge to Americans.
"What those last lines are asking us to think about is
whether or not it's a worthless effort to try to get ahead, run faster, be
stronger, in light of the fact that ultimately we all die and are pulled back
into the past, or whether that's what makes us great, that we do try."
In 1985, Scottie Fitzgerald was buried with her parents in
the family plot at St. Mary's churchyard. Her grave is at their feet.
The quotable Fitzgerald
“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.
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