Gatsby Key Quotes

I hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool

Chap 1 - Daisy's desire for her daughter

'She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't you think?'

Chap 1 - Jordan's judgement of Tom's relationship

"Only Gatsby...was exempt from my reaction"

Chap 1 - Nick's biased view of Gatsby, wants to see the best in him

"Gatsby turned out all right at the end"

Chap 1 - Nick's statement about Gatsby

[Tom] had some woman in New York

Chap 1 - Tom's infidelity

Civilisation's gone to pieces

Chap 1 - Tom, against black people but reflects immoral era

The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air.

Chap 1 - awkwardness, everyone knows about Tom's affair

"Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it

Chap 1 - description of Daisy's face

"one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty−one that everything afterward savors of anti−climax."

Chap 1 - description of Tom

'Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!' shouted Mrs. Wilson. 'I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai——' Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.

Chap 2 - Myrtle teasing Tom about Daisy, Tom's violence

The only crazy I was was when I married him.

Chap 2 - Myrtle's dismissal of George

"I married [George] because I thought he was a gentleman," she said finally. "I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe."

Chap 2 - Myrtle's reasoning for marrying George, dismisses him

I want you to meet my girl

Chap 2 - Tom to Nick, disregard of Daisy

'Neither of them can stand the person they're married to.' 'Can't they?' ...If I was them I'd get a divorce and get married to each other right away.'...It's really his wife that's keeping them apart. She's a Catholic and they don't believe in divorce.' Daisy was not a Catholic and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.

Chap 2 - Tom's lie to excuse him from leaving Daisy

"It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it... It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood..."

Chap 3 - Nick's love for Gatsby, power of his image

"Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply."

Chap 3 - Nick's view of honesty

"In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."

Chap 3 - description of Gatsby's parties

"He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse."

Chap 3 - the fragility of Gatsby's wealth/facade

"Tell 'em all Daisy's change her mine."...She began to cry - she cried and cried.

Chap 4 - Daisy before her wedding to Tom

"Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay."

Chap 4 - Gatsby's desperation to be near to Daisy

Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.

Chap 4 - Nick's belief in Gatsby

"So my first impression...had gradually faded and he had become simply the proprietor of an elaborate road-house next door... I wondered if there wasn't something a little sinister about him, after all...The very phrases were worn so threadbare...Then it was all true.`"

Chap 4 - Nick's temporary distrust of Gatsby

The girl who was with him got into the papers, too... She was one of the chambermaids

Chap 4 - Tom's infidelity, does not try to hide it

'Don't bring Tom.' 'Who is 'Tom'?' she asked innocently.

Chap 5 - Daisy willing to forget about Tom to meet Gatsby, immorality of era

"I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes."

Chap 5 - Gatsby values Daisy's opinions about his life

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

Chap 5 - Gatsby's built up desires

"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."

Chap 5 - Gatsby's expectations of Daisy

Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to him, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted things had diminished by one.

Chap 5 - Gatsby's illusions breaking when combined with reality

"The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain."

Chap 5 - description of Daisy's voice

I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn't be over-dreamed —that voice was a deathless song.

Chap 5 - effect of Daisy's voice

'If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay... You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock'

Chap 5 - shows Gatsby's fascination with Daisy, mist could represent fading love or reduced chances for Jay to be with Daisy

"He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.

Chap 6 - Gatby's fixation on the past and his experiences with Daisy

"I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then..."

Chap 6 - Gatsby's need for Daisy, desire has defined him

"But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot.... A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain ..."

Chap 6 - James gatz' dreams of wealth

"now I was looking at it again, through Daisy's eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment."

Chap 6 - Nick's realisation of Daisy's judgement

"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can"

Chap 6 - believes he can turn back time, fixation on the past and his experiences with Daisy

the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone

Chap 6 - power of Gatsby's dreams and desires

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...Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

Chap 6 - power of kissing Daisy

"all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately — and the decision must be made by some force — of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality — that was close at hand"

Chap 7 - Daisy's indecision/panic

"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now—isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him once—but I loved you too." Gatsby's eyes opened and closed. "You loved me too?" he repeated.

Chap 7 - Daisy's panic, Gatsby's pain/realisation

'your wife doesn't love you' said Gatsby. 'she's never loved you. she loves me'

Chap 7 - Gatsby's frantic claim of Daisy's love

"left him standing there in the moonlight, watching over nothing."

Chap 7 - Gatsby's obsession with Daisy

A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting; before he could move from his door the business was over.

Chap 7 - Myrtle's attempt to escape

Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick, dark blood with the dust.

Chap 7 - Myrtle's death

"Not at Kapiolani?.. Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?" There was a husky tenderness in his tone.

Chap 7 - Tom after Daisy says she never loved him

I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife."

Chap 7 - Tom defending himself against Gatsby, hypocritical

"Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time."

Chap 7 - Tom trying to justify his behaviour

He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world and the shock had made him physically sick.

Chap 7 - Tom's realisation of Myrtle's real life

In a little while I heard a low husky sob and saw that the tears were overflowing down his face. 'The God D*mn coward!' he whimpered. 'He didn't even stop his car.'

Chap 7 - Tom's sadness at Myrtle's death

'I've got my wife locked in up there,' explained Wilson calmly. 'She's going to stay there till the day after tomorrow and then we're going to move away.'

Chap 7 - Wilson trapping Myrtle

"They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale---and yet they weren't unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together."

Chap 7 - bond between Daisy and Tom

"You always look so cool," she repeated. She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw.

Chap 7 - daisy's love for jay

"The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby."

Chap 7 - effect of Daisy's love for Tom

"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly...that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it

Chap 7 - effect of daisy's voice

'But it's so hot... 'And everything's so confused.

Chap 7 - effect of heat, Daisy's panic

Daisy hadn't sent a message or a flower

Chap 8 - Daisy's actions after Gatsby's death

I don't think she ever loved him

Chap 8 - Gatsby about Daisy's love for Tom

he stretched his hand out desperately...to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now... and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.

Chap 8 - Gatsby's desire to keep things how they should be/save his plan

Nobody came.

Chap 8 - Gatsby's funeral

He couldn't possibly leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do. He was clutching at some last hope...

Chap 8 - Gatsby's obsession, still clinging on to hope

"They're a rotten crowd', I shouted across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."

Chap 8 - Nick's defence of Gatsby

"They had never been closer in their month of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with another."

Chap 8 Gatsby and daisy in love

No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o'clock - until long after there was any one to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.

Chap 8- Gatsby's obsession, still clinging on to hope, knows it is over

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they... retreated back into their money

Chap 9 - Daisy and Tom's shallowness

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

Chap 9 - Gatsby's hope for Daisy and for himself

"His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him."

Chap 9 - Gatsby's hope for Daisy, does not realise his dream is already over

"I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride." "I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour."

Chap 9 - Jordan and Nick, reversal of beginning when Nick claims he is 'inclined to reserve all judgement', accepts that he judges people, tired of being around dishonest people

His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control.

Chapter 7 - change in Tom's security