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The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, "The Crack Up"
Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Tender is the Night
The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long that we've forgotten there’s any other way.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, This Side of Paradise
The years between thirty-five and sixty-five revolve before the passive mind as one unexplained, confusing merry-go-round. True, they are a merry-go-round of ill-gaited and wind-broken horses, painted first in pastel colors, then in dull grays and browns, but perplexing and intolerably dizzy the thing is, as never were the merry-go-rounds of childhood or adolescence; as never, surely, were the certain-coursed, dynamic roller-coasters of youth. For most men and women these thirty years are taken up with a gradual withdrawal from life.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, "O Russet Witch!"
Isn’t Hollywood a dump—in the human sense of the word. A hideous town, pointed up by the insulting gardens of its rich, full of the human spirit at a new low of debasement.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, letter, Jul. 29, 1940
Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, letter to his daughter, Aug. 24, 1940
Boredom is not an end-product, is comparatively rather an early stage in life and art. You’ve got to go by or past or through boredom, as through a filter, before the clear product emerges.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, The Crack-Up
Action is character.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Notes for The Last Tycoon
New friends ... can often have a better time together than old friends.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Tender Is the Night
Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, "Notebook O," The Crack-Up
No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, The Great Gatsby
All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase--"I love you."
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, "The Offshore Pirate"
Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Notebooks
At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, "Bernice Bobs Her Hair"
[Growing up] is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Notebooks
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, undated letter to his daughter "Scottie"
People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher — a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, This Side of Paradise
Debut: the first time a young girl is seen drunk in public.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Notebooks
Either you think--or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Tender is the Night
The victor belongs to the spoils.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, The Beautiful and Damned
Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, The Great Gatsby
A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, letter to "Scottie," Nov. 18, 1938
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, The Great Gatsby
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Notebooks
The strongest guard is placed at the gateway to nothing ... maybe because the condition of emptiness is too shameful to be divulged.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Tender Is the Night
It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Notebooks
No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Notebooks
After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, letter to his cousin Cici
The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle, complimentary way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Notebooks
Receding from grief, it seems necessary to retrace the same steps that brought us there.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Tender Is the Night
Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"
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