The Great Gatsby is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, set in the summer of 1922 in the fictional town of West Egg on Long Island. The novel follows the life of the wealthy young man Jay Gatsby, who becomes enamored with a woman named Daisy Buchanan.
Gatsby throws lavish parties in an attempt to win Daisy’s love, but ultimately their relationship is doomed due to their social differences and the secrets of Gatsby’s past. The story is narrated by Nick Carraway, a young man who becomes Gatsby’s neighbor and becomes embroiled in the drama of Gatsby’s life.
As the summer progresses, the relationships between the characters become strained and a series of tragic events unfold, culminating in the death of Gatsby and the unraveling of the lives of those around him. The novel explores themes of love, greed, social class, and the decline of the American dream.
1. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. “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.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s Business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. “No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. “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.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. “I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. “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.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
9. “I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
10. “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
11. “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. “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.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
13. “He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. “I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
15. “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.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
16. “His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. 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 he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
17. “I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
18. “It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
