The Great Gatsby Quotes

Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 8. Gatsby tells Nick that during the war Daisy gave up waiting for his return and re-entered her position in society. The personification of the despicable thoughts and ideas the very rich have towards life, Daisy is a snobby, inconsiderate, pompous girl who cares about herself before others.

Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed. And 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.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 8, Daisy is ready to settle down and her ‘artificial world’ is about to be taken over by Tom. She sees in him a life she is accustomed to, he is wealthy, secure and in control.

‘I don’t think she ever loved him.’ Gatsby turned around from a window and looked at me challengingly. ‘You must remember, old sport, she was very excited this afternoon. He told her those things in a way that frightened her – that made it look as if I was some kind of cheap sharper. And the result was she hardly knew what she was saying.’
He sat down gloomily.
‘Of course she might have loved him just for a minute, when they were first married – and loved me more even then, do you see?’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 8, to keep his dream about Daisy alive, Gatsby rationalizes her fickle behavior to him. She may have married Tom Buchanan, but she never really loved him, he believes.

‘They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’
I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 8, Nick, speaking to Gatsby right before he dies, points out that wealth and class mean nothing in terms of character.

‘I’ve left Daisy’s house,’ she said. ‘I’m at Hempstead and I’m going down to Southampton this afternoon.’
Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy’s house, but the act annoyed me and her next remark made me rigid.
‘You weren’t so nice to me last night.’
‘How could it have mattered then?’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 8. Following Myrtle’s tragic death, Jordan Baker’s casual, devil-may-care attitude is no longer attractive to Nick. In fact he is disgusted that she is so unaffected by Myrtle’s death, and all she is concerned about from the previous day is that Nick wasn’t attentive enough to her.

‘Have you got a church you go to sometimes, George? Maybe even if you haven’t been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see?’
‘Don’t belong to any.’
‘You ought to have a church, George, for times like this. You must have gone to church once. Didn’t you get married in a church? Listen, George, listen to me. Didn’t you get married in a church?’
‘That was a long time ago.’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 8, Michaelis talks to a distressed George, who has little time for institutionalized religion, which he sees as a relic of an older age.

‘I spoke to her,’ he muttered, after a long silence. ‘I told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the window’ – with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it – ‘and I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’
Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night.
‘God sees everything,’ repeated Wilson.
‘That’s an advertisement,’ Michaelis assured him. Something made him turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 8, George Wilson is talking about his dead wife Myrtle, whom he found out had been cheating on him. Wilson believes that God, the source of ultimate knowledge and justice, sees everything. He confuses the eyes of Doctor Eckleburg with the eyes of God, but they are the remains of an old billboard advert for a company that no longer exists.

He must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about…like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 8. Nick imagines what Gatsby must have been feeling when George Wilson shot him as he lay on an air mattress in his pool. He tries to imagine what it was like for Gatsby to have lost his dream – the American Dream and Daisy who was a major part of it. The symbolism of the flower suggests that Gatsby felt disillusioned with Daisy and she was not a worthy object of his worship. The ‘ashen’ figure is George Wilson, the character most closely associated with the Valley of Ashes.

There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other with little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of compass, a thin red circle in the water.

It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 8, Nick’s description of the scene of the murder, when Gatsby’s body is discovered. The language suggests that for all of his wealth and infamy, he he never quite made the impact that he had wished. He was a little ripple in a large pool called America. In death he was reduced to just a ‘thin red circle in the water.’ Gatsby’s murder and the discovery of the body of Wilson, who killed him, symbolize the death of Gatsby’s dream.

Most of those reports were a nightmare – grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue. When Michaelis’s testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson’s suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade – but Catherine, who might have said anything, didn’t say a word. She showed a surprising amount of character about it too – looked at the coroner with determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband, that her sister had been into no mischief whatever. She convinced herself of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion was more than she could endure. So Wilson was reduced to a man ‘deranged by grief,’ in order that the case might remain in its simplest form. And it rested there.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, Following Gatsby’s death journalists spread rumors about his relationship with Myrtle and George Wilson. Myrtle’s sister Catherine allowed Gatsby to retain a little respect and dignity after he died, she claimed that Myrtle never cheated on Wilson. So the case was wrapped up as Wilson going crazy and killing a man.

‘I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them.’
‘Left no address?’
‘No.’
‘Say when they’d be back?’
‘No.’
‘Any idea where they are? How I could reach them?’
‘I don’t know. Can’t say.’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, Tom and Daisy left before Gatsby was declared dead because Tom wanted to show Gatsby that Daisy really loved him more than Gatsby. Because of their wealth and privilege, they manage to escape the consequences of their actions.

Next morning I sent the butler to New York with a letter to Wolfsheim, which asked for information and urged him to come out on the next train. That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it. I was sure he’d start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure a there’d be a wire from Daisy before noon – but neither a wire nor Mr. Wolfsheim arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers and newspaper men. When the butler brought back Wolfsheim’s answer I began to have a feeling of defiance, of scornful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them all.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, after Gatsby’s death Nick realizes just how alone Gatsby was. lonliness is one of the major themes in the novel.

After a little while Mr. Gatz opened the door and came out, his mouth ajar, his face flushed slightly, his eyes leaking isolated and unpunctual tears. He had reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked around him now for the first time and saw the height and splendor of the hall and the great rooms opening out from it into other rooms, his grief began to be mixed with an awed pride.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, Gatsby’s father who traveled half-way around the continent to see his son. It is as if he can’t process that his son is dead, or that this mansion belonged to him.

When a man gets killed I never like to get mixed up in it in any way. I keep out. When I was a young man it was different…I stuck with them to the end…Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, Meyer Wolfshiem recalls the good times he had with Gatsby many years ago. he believes that living and celebrating with someone while they are alive is far better friendship than just showing up at their funeral.

A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing, and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other cars. So did Gatsby’s father. And as the time passed and the servants came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously, and he spoke of the rain in a worried, uncertain way. The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, we all die alone. Some of are buried alone, none more so than the great man Gatsby, for whom nobody besides the owl-eyed man, Nick and Gatsby’s dad turns up for his funeral. In this material world where money reigns there are no spiritual values. God and religion are dead, and the American dream corrupted. When Gatsby is stripped of his material possessions in death, those who flocked to his parties in life don’t bother to attend his funeral.

The poor son-of-a-bitch.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, Owl Eyes at Gatsby’s funeral, the only party-goer there. He is the one person who seems to feel sorry for Gatsby, aside from his father and Nick. The Owl-Eyed Man in The Great Gatsby has been compared to the Dr. T. J. Eckleburg billboard with its ‘all-seeing’ eyes. Both are symbols of a spectator god. His attendance as one of the few to attend Gatsby’s funeral could be seen as meaning that God is watching when humans are laid to rest and Gatsby was worthy of his presence at his funeral.

One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty good-by.

I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-That’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: ‘Are you going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?’ and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, Nick’s description of the Midwest, before he left Chicago and went East and found Gatsby. The author is trying to ground us in what Nick once knew and compare it to the shallowness and decay of what he found when he went East. The American Dream – “the real snow” – was perhaps what he left behind, not what he went to in the valley of ashes.

That’s my Middle West…the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark….I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house….I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all – Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, Nick realizes that none of them are from the East with its quick-paced culture, but are from the rural Midwest. In the East they had been giving into the indulgences of the wealthy upper class without thinking of the consequences. They were unable to handle it, resulting in the death of a great man.

‘You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. 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 honor.’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, When Nick breaks up with Jordan, she accuses him of being dishonest and disingenuously leading her on.
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