Great Gatsby Love Quotes

Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the ‘Saturday Evening Post’ – the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1. Nick pays close attention to Jordan’s placement and posture, as she reads from the couch, suggesting that he may be developing an interest in her.

I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her gray sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1, Nick eyes Jordan Baker, a professional golfer of some fame. We see his immediate physical attraction to her so it comes as no surprise that he becomes romantically involved. But in keeping with the valley of ashes theme, Jordan’s gray eyes suggest something hidden about this woman who cheats at golf and also bends the truth.

He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 1, for Gatsby the green light at end of Daisy’s dock represents the American Dream and his dream of being reunited with Daisy, the woman he loves. It is a constantly recurring symbol in the novel.

It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me, and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm, and so I told him I’d have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn’t hardly know I wasn’t getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever.’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 2, Myrtle telling the story of her first meeting with Tom. Twelve years into an unhappy marriage Myrtle sees the encounter as the beginning of a love story and a romantic escape. But to Tom Myrtle is less a person and more of a sexual object.

Her (Jordan) gray, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires, and I knew that first I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home. I’d been writing letters once a week and signing them: ‘Love, Nick,’ and all I could think of was how, when that certain girl played tennis, a faint mustache of perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 3, Nick describes his relationship with Jordan, whom he thinks he is in love with. At the same time he is telling his ‘girl’ back home that he loves her.

‘Here, deares’. She groped around in a waste-basket she had with her on the bed and pulled out the string of pearls. ‘Take ’em down-stairs and give ’em back to whoever they belong to. Tell ’em all Daisy’s change’ her mind. Say: ‘Daisy’s change’ her mine!’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 4, Daisy knows the expensive string of pearls Tom gave her is about to become a chain and changes her mind about marrying Tom Buchanan. When drunk she wants to marry the man she really loves, Jay Gatsby. But then she sobers up and in the cold light of day she does what she was born to do: marry the rich man – Tom.

Well, about six weeks ago, she heard the name Gatsby for the first time in years. It was when I asked you – do you remember? – if you knew Gatsby in West Egg. After you had gone home she came into my room and woke me up, and said: ‘What Gatsby?’ and when I described him – I was half asleep – she said in the strangest voice that it must be the man she used to know. It wasn’t until then that I connected this Gatsby with the officer in her white car.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 4. Jordan Baker relating the story of Daisy to Nick Carraway. And how she realized that Jay Gatsby was the young officer who before she married Tom watched her ‘in a way that every girl wants to be looked at’ – her former love.

When I said you were a particular friend of Tom’s, he started to abandon the whole idea. He doesn’t know very much about Tom, though he says he’s read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy’s name.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 4. Jordan tells Nick that Gatsby wants Nick to invite Daisy to his house and let Gatsby come over. Gatsby has read a Chicago paper for years just on the chance of catching a glimpse of Daisy’s name, she says. He is devoted to, or obsessed with Daisy.

They were sitting at either end of the couch looking at each other as if some question had been asked or was in the air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone. Daisy’s face was smeared with tears and when I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 5. Gatsby and Daisy are at first uncomfortable at their reunion. But when Nick leaves them alone to sort it out and returns he finds them talking openly and emotionally. Gatsby is glowing with love for Daisy, though she is in tears, suggesting that maybe she is not as invested as Gatsby in the relationship.

He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 5. Gatsby is blinded by love. A man who places a great importance on his wealth and material possessions, these now pale in comparison to the woman he loves.

He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third. After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an over-wound clock.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 5, Gatsby’s emotion changes from embarrasment to wonder, it is all too sudden for him to meet Daisy, whom he has been dreaming of for five years. The paradox is that when he achieves the thing he had strived so hard to get, he doesn’t know what to make of it.

Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.
‘They’re such beautiful shirts,’ she sobbed, her voice muffled in the think folds. ‘It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such – such beautiful shirts before.’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 5, Gatsby is like a peacock flaunting his wealth to Daisy and showing off his shirts he has sent to him from England. Materialistic Daisy realizes she made a mistake in marrying Tom for his money, not being aware that one day Gatsby the man she loved would also be rich.

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 her, 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 objects had diminished by one.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 5. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock represented Gatsby’s dream of a new life with Daisy. Now he had realized that dream, he had Daisy’s love.

He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you.’ After she had obliterated four years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken. One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house – just as if it were five years ago.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 6. Gatsby wants Daisy to not just end her relationship with Tom, but to tell him she never loved him. Gatsby doesn’t want others to have Daisy’s love, he wants her completely for himself.

He talked a lot about the past, and 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, but if he could return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 6, Gatsby has not moved on from his past but is obsessed with trying to recreate. That was the time he had Daisy in his life and was happiest.

Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees – he could climb it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 6, the ladder is a symbol of success and also the climb to reaching the American Dream. Gatsby can only climb the ladder alone if he wants to fulfil his dreams. He must choose between whether he wants love or success. But he tries to achieve both and this ends with his destruction later on.

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

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 6, Gatsby on his first kiss with Daisy. This kiss ties Daisy to all of Gatsby’s bigger dreams for a better life – to his American Dream. And it also sets the stage for the tragic ending to the novel, when Daisy cannot hold up under the weight of the dream Gatsby projects onto her and instead stays with Tom Buchanan.

‘Who wants to go to town?’ demanded Daisy insistently. Gatsby’s eyes floated toward her. ‘Ah,’ she cried, ‘you look so cool.’
Their eyes met, and they stared together at each other, alone in space. With an effort she glanced down at the table.
‘You always look so cool,’ she repeated.
She had told him that she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw. He was astounded. His mouth opened a little, and he looked at Gatsby, and then back at Daisy as if he had just recognized her as some one he knew a long time ago.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 7, Daisy’s confession of love for Gatsby. Though they don’t speak of love aloud, it is clear to Daisy’s husband Tom from their behavior that Daisy and Gatsby are having an affair – much like Tom is.

‘You’re crazy!’ he exploded. ‘I can’t speak about what happened five years ago, because I didn’t know Daisy then – and I’ll be damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door. But all the rest of that’s a God damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now.’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 7, Tom Buchanan to Gatsby, accusing him of lying about Daisy’s love and assuring him that Daisy loved him, Tom.
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