F. Scott Fitzgerald — Quotes from Author's Books

She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body.

This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.

They had many fine times together, fine talks between the loves of the white nights, but always when he turned away from her into himself he left her holding Nothing in her hands and staring at it, calling it many names, but knowing it was only the hope that he would come back soon.

He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.

I want it to die violently instead of fading out sentimentally—that’s why I gave this party.

I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.

At small parties there isn’t any privacy.

Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth. And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit.

She was sorry, and rather revolted at his dirty hands, but she laughed in a well-bred way, as though it were nothing unusual to her to watch a man walking in a slow dream.
Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane.
Respect rather than fear.
There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions, who will do anything.
Of course we make him pay afterward for his moment of superiority, his moment of impressiveness.

God! Banish the thought. Why don't you tell me that 'if the girl had been worth having she'd have waited for you'? No, sir, the girl really worth having won't wait for anybody.

“She’s got an indiscreet voice,” I remarked.
“It’s full of -” I hesitated.
“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.
That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it… High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl… .

They're a rotten crowd. You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.

It takes two to make an accident.

What was the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?

You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumors, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage.