The Great GatsbyF Scott FitzgeraldKey Quotations
Chapter 1
Introduced to Nick, who has just moved to West Egg near New York City. He visits his second cousin Daisy who lives in East Egg. We find out that Tom and Daisy Buchannan are extremely rich but that their marriage is far from perfect as Tom is having an affair, which Daisy is aware of.
-‘ “Whenever you feel like criticising anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”’ (p.7)
-‘Reserving judgement is a matter of infinite hope.’ (p.7)
-‘Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have unaffected scorn.’ (p.8)
-‘If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.’ (p.8)
-‘an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness’ (p.8)
-‘My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle-Western city for three generations.’ (p.8)
-‘I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless.’ (p.9)
-‘Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe – so I decided to go east and learn the bond business.’ (p.9)
-‘They are not perfect ovals – like the egg in the Columbus story.’ (p.11)
-‘They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.’ (p.12)
-Tom – ‘He was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward... It was a body capable of enormous leverage – a cruel body.’ (p.13)
-‘” Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.”’ (p.13)
-‘I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfuless of his own.’ (p.13)
-‘promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had.’ (p.15)
-‘as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire’ (p.18)
-‘There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him anymore.’ (p.20)
-‘this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency’ (p.22)
-‘”I’m pretty cynical about everything.”’ (p.23)
-‘ “I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”’ (p.24)
Chapter 2
Opens with description of the valley of ashes, the space between the affluent suburban Eggs and the City. The valley of ashes is dirty and industrial and symbolises the decay and waste of the age. Also inequality of experiences between those with money and without. Tom collects his mistress and they go to their apartment in New York for a party. The mood at the party turns sour when Tom hits Myrtle for talking about Daisy.
-Valley of ashes: ‘a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens.’ (p.29)
-‘ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.’ (p.29)
-‘Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.’ (p.29)
-Tom ‘his determination to have my company bordered on violence.’ (p.30)
-Wilson ‘a blonde, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes.’ (p.31)
-Myrtle ‘she carried her flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face... contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.’ (p.32)
-Tom about Wilson: ‘ “He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.”’ (p.32)
-‘I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon.’ (p.35)
-‘With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her.’ (p.37)
-‘they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm’s’ (p.38)
-‘“Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to.”’ (p.39)
-‘”What I say is , why go on living with them if they can’t stand them? If I was them I’d get a divorce and get married to each other right away.”’ (p.39) said by Catherine, Myrtle’s sister.
-Lie that Daisy is a Catholic – suggestion that Tom has no intention of divorce.
-Myrtle about Wilson ‘” I married him because I thought he was a gentleman... I thought he knew something about breeding.’ (p.41)
-‘I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.’ (p.42) – Nick, narrative voice
-On McKee: ‘I wiped from his cheek the spot of dried lather that had worried me all afternoon.’ (p.43)
-‘Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchannan broke her nose with an open hand.’ (p.43)