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."

"I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men."

"This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens"

"The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose."

"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."

"He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life."

"He's a bootlegger,' said the young ladies, and somewhere among the wine and the flowers and the music, they moved with a certain haste and a certain carelessness, as if they were already aware that the party was over."

"In just two minutes it'll be five years since I last saw you."

"I've been living in it for some time,' he repeated, and I wondered if he meant to add 'alone.'"

"He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third. After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock."

"He had 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."

"No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."