Gatsby Past Life Quotes & Sayings

You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil. — Azar Nafisi

My courage is faith
faith in the eternal resilience of me
that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high and my eyes wide
not necessarily any silly smiling. Oh, I've been through hell without a whine quite often
and the female hell is deadlier than the male. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Whereas 'Avatar' and other movies get shocks out of their three-dimensionality, 'Gatsby' is going to be about inviting the audience into this larger-than-life drama, letting them almost be inside the room rather than looking at it through the window. I think it will really work. — Joel Edgerton

I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all
Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life. — F Scott Fitzgerald

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

It's all life is. Just going 'round kissing people. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I found something! Courage
just that; courage as a rule of life and something to cling to always. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald describes the social disillusionments and ballroom romanticism of the young people of the upper classes and the loneliness of Gatsby, who gives large parties and has an extensive social life; yet he is lonely, and his guests scarcely know him ... Hemingway's characters live in a tourist world, and one of their major problems is that of consuming time itself. It is interesting to observe that his works are written from the stand point of the spectator. His characters are usually people who are looking
looking at bullfights, scenery, and at one another across cafe tables. — James T. Farrell

If this were a fairy tale, this would be the part where the fishboy appears and Diana shoots him through the heart. Because he is a tragic hero, he's our fucking Gatsby, and he lived for his fish and he has to die for his fish. He would never let my fake authority, condoning his abandonment, making up rules about what's okay just to save his life, convince him to give up his family. He would never leave.
He would know that without him, none of us will be as good. Me, without a friend; and the fish, without a brother; and the island, without a story; and Diana, without her something real, we will all be a little bit less than we were before we knew him.
So he wouldn't leave. Not until I could come with him. And I have never been less able to leave than I am now.
But this isn't a fairy tale, and he doesn't appear. We stand here for a long time.
He really left.
Because it was all that we could do. — Hannah Moskowitz

For Americans, the car is the American way. Jay Gatsby roars through capitalism, individual freedom, and the good life. For China, the train is the metaphor. Everyone's on board, there's no chance to steer, and it's clickety-clack to collectivism's dreams. — Mei Fong

Sometimes
I want a quiet life
other times
I want to go
a little bit
fucking Gatsby. — Atticus Poetry

Human sympathy has its limits. — F Scott Fitzgerald

It is always hard to leave a home a drama a way of life a life. So I sat there warm and safe that night held by the sea and a good man and my own good fortune victim and witness to all the transitory sweetness like Gatsby's dreams that stood before and behind me. — Gail Caldwell

Mr. Scott Fitzgerald deserves a good shaking. Here is an unmistakable talent unashamed of making itself a motley to the view. The Great Gatsby is an absurd story, whether considered as romance, melodrama, or plain record of New York high life. — L.P. Hartley

It's little strange, perhaps, to make this claim at such a late date, but Gatsby really is an outstanding novel. I never get tired of it, no matter how many times I read it. It's the kind of a novel that nourishes you as you read, and every time I do, I'm struck by something new, and experience a fresh reaction to it. I find it how such a young writer, only twenty-nine at the time could grasp
so insightfully, so equitably, and so warmly
the realities of life. How was that possible? The more I think about it, and the more I read the novel, the more mysterious it all is. — Haruki Murakami