F. Scott Fitzgerald

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.

It takes a genius to whine appealingly.

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. But of course the real reason, …

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

It isn't given for us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. They will not be cured by our most efficacious …

His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.(From: A Diamond As Big as The Ritz)

All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase— 'I love you.' (From: The Offshore Pirate)

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.

Thirty — the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.

In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the common store of life.

'Look here, old sport, [...] what's your opinion of me, anyhow?' A little overwhelmed, I began the generalized evasions which that question deserves.

Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply - I was casually sorry, and then I forgot.

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.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They are not like aches or wounds; they are more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there is not enough material.

I care not who hoes the lettuce of my country if I can eat the salad!

The farmers may be the backbone of the country, but who wants to be a backbone?

They're all deserting me. I've been too kind. Spare the rod and spoil the fun. Oh, for the glands of a Bismarck.

Summer was gone and now Indian summer. The grass was cold and there was no mist and no dew. After he left she would go in and light the gas and close the shatters, and he would go down the path and on to the village. To these two life had …

It was a marriage of love. He was sufficiently spoiled to be charming; she was ingenuous enough to be irresistible. Like two floating logs they met in a head-on rush, caught, and sped along together.

Of this story I can say that it came to me in an irresistible form, crying to be written. It will be accused perhaps of being a mere piece of sentimentality, but, as I saw it, it was a great deal more. If, therefore, it lacks the ring of …

But it was too late. He had angered Providence by resisting too many temptations. There was nothing left but heaven, where he would meet only those who, like him, had wasted earth.

He knew now that he had always been a fool.

The years between thirty-five and sixty-five revolve before the passive mind as one unexplained, confusing merry-go-round.