quotes by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselssly into the past."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke. "
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning--
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

"
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)

"I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side Of Paradise)

"All good writing is like swimming underwater and holding your breath."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

""In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day."
"
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you. "
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

"His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

""Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
"
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

"There must have been moments even that afternoon whe Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

"Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true. "
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

"I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.

- Nick Carroway"
— F. Scott Fitzgerald