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But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor. Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid scene with an oblivious embrace. For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Various Phrases My Girlfriend Has Shouted at Me in All Caps via Text Message, and Their Subjects
- “ALSO I THINK SHE’S REALLY COOL AND I HAVE A GIRL CRUSH ON HER AND I WANT TO TALK TO HER ABOUT GENERAL THINGS” — some blog
- “SERIOUSLY THOUGH HE’S MARRIED TO THE LUNATIC IN THE ATTIC AND YOU STILL MARRY HIM” — Jane Eyre
- “SO TANGY AND DELICIOUS” — a bowl of noodles
- “SO BAD” — Jane Eyre
- “TAKE MY HAND AND WE’LL MAKE IT I SWEAR” — a cold I had one week ago
- “NO I DID NOT JUST CALL YOU JESUS DON’T THINK I DID” — her religion
- “I DON’T WORSHIP YOU” — her religion
- “I LOVE YOU AND THAT IS DIFFERENT” — her religion
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Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I promise I will try to keep posting Gatsby excerpts to a minimum.
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I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others - poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner - young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
