Quotes from The Great Gatsby

"I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." Daisy
"I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged." Nick
"- but no one swooned backward on Gatsby and no French bob touched Gatsby's shoulder and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby's head for one link." Nick
Nick: "Suppose you meet someone just as careless as yourself?"
Jordan: "I hope I never will." Dialog
"You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock." Gatsby
to Daisy
"So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end." Nick
" 'Can't repeat the past?' he cried incredulously. 'Why of course you can!' " Gatsby
"His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once again return to a certain place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was..." Nick
"Her voice is full of money" Gatsby
about Daisy
"It excited him too that many men had already loved Daisy- it increased her value in his eyes." Nick
"... and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor." Nick
" 'They're a rotten crowd' I shouted, across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together' " Nick
Jordan: "You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I though you were rather an honest, straightforward, person. I though it was your secret pride."
Nick: " 'I'm thirty' I said. 'I'm five years to old to lie to myself and call it honor.' " Dialog
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Nick
"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 farther..... And one fine morning- " Nick