100+ Best Fitzgerald Quotes That Inspire, Motivate & Captivate

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

“He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by men.”

“The American Dream was born in the belief that anyone could rise from rags to riches.”

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.”

“It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it.”

“The rich are different from you and me.”

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.”

“You can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!”

“He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time.”

“He did not know that it was already behind him.”

“The dream was far behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city.”

“He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.”

“I love her, and that’s the beginning and end of everything.”

“There are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice.”

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.

“I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”

“Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a complete idiot of myself, but I always come back.”

“I wanted the world to be uniformed and at a sort of moral attention forever.”

“No amount of fire or future can destroy what’s done in the past.”

“I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool.”

“She smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it.”

“I loved you too much to let you go.”

“You see, I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.”

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”

“They have no real right to beat us like that—if they keep these things secret their children won’t know how to behave in a jam.”

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money.”

“Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score.”

“The very rich are incurably frivolous.”

“People who break rules and get away with it often feel superior to those who mind the store.”

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.”

“Wealth is a great power, but it is dangerous to use.”

“Poor boys shouldn’t think of marrying rich girls.”

“The rich don’t live better lives; they just buy more distractions.”

“He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just what it says—and he inherited the wild promiscuity of fathers.”

“Privilege is not a birthright—it’s a burden disguised as freedom.”

“I want to do something great before I’m thirty.”

“Genius is the ability to live intensely in the present moment.”

“Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves—that’s the truth.”

“Action is the only road to achievement.”

“Nothing happens to a writer that isn’t material.”

“You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”

“The worst thing in the world is to want something badly and not get it.”

“Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.”

“I was always able to think of everything except solutions.”

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”

“I am a writer, not a careerist.”

“I was a man divided between the desire to write and the desire to shine.”

“Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!”

“In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.”

“The parties were bigger, the pace was faster, the shows were broader, the buildings were higher, the morals were looser.”

“I wanted to come back and look at the house again.”

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

“The chronic repression of a vital instinct creates a permanent uneasiness.”

“I had a feeling that I had come to the end of something.”

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams.”

“It was a great relief to get away from the city where everything was so sharp and defined.”

“He remembered the rest of the evening as a night of broken lights and drunken laughter.”

“He had lived in the moment, never quite believing in the future.”

“Time moves in one direction, memory in another.”

“He looked around him with eyes dimmed a little by the veil of the years.”

“The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.”

“He invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent.”

“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 we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.”

“Reality was something that had no place in memory.”

“He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time.”

“The face of the moon had changed, and now it was a silver disc floating above the trees.”

“He was clutching at some last idea—as if, if he could only find the right word, he could bring it all back.”

“He saw it as it had never been seen—in the mind of a man who had lost everything.”

“The illusion was stronger than the truth.”

“Dreams are one thing and reality is another.”

“I am still a little afraid of my own heart.”

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

“I was a man divided between two worlds.”

“I was both older and younger than I had ever been.”

“I was constantly torn between the desire to be admired and the fear of exposure.”

“I wanted to be extraordinary, but I feared being found out.”

“I had become used to the idea of being alone.”

“I was not what I pretended to be.”

“I wore the mask of confidence, but beneath it was panic.”

“I was always performing, even when I was alone.”

“I was haunted by the thought that I didn’t belong.”

“I built a persona brick by brick until I forgot the man underneath.”

“Youth is an illusion; it fades before you know it.”

“I was young and miserable and full of rage.”

“The ache for the past hung over the afternoon like the dark clouds of a summer squall.”

“I had been handed everything except the thing I wanted—the chance to be taken seriously.”

“There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.”

“I was a boy who wanted to be loved for who I was, not what I could offer.”

“He was never quite the same after that summer.”

“The world was full of magic, but I was too blind to see it.”

“I believed in happy endings until I lived one.”

“We were all young once, drunk on possibility.”

“The innocence of youth is not knowing how much you’ve already lost.”

“I looked back at the girl I once was and barely recognized her.”

“You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”

“The reason one writes isn’t the fact one has something to say, but the need to say it.”

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

“The purpose of writing is to convey ideas and emotions with precision.”

“I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.”

“Nothing is as painful as an almost memory.”

“The richest inner life is no good unless you can express it.”

“A typewriter is to the writer what the canvas is to the painter.”

“I revise everything I write—at least a dozen times.”

“Fiction is the truth under another name.”

“The best style is the style you don’t notice.”

“Writing is a lonely job, but it’s the only job I ever wanted.”

“There is no confusion like the confusion of a silent house.”

“I had everything I wanted, but I was still unhappy.”

“The loneliest moment is when you realize no one sees you the way you see yourself.”

“I was tired of the world, tired of its noise and its lies.”

“I had reached the point of caring about nothing.”

“He had expected too much and received too little.”

“The world was empty, and I was part of its emptiness.”

“I felt the old unrest creeping up again.”

“He had dreamed too big and lived too small.”

“There was no joy in victory, only relief.”

“I had spent my life running toward a mirage.”

“Disillusionment is the price of clarity.”