The Great Gatsby

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

There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

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

The notion originated with Daisy’s suggestion that we hire five bath-rooms and take cold baths, and then assumed more tangible form as a place to have a mint julep. Each of us said over and over that it was a crazy idea.—we all talked at once to a baffled clerk and thought, or pretended to think, that we were being very funny...

Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.

The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.