To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

Human sympathy has its limits.

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

[Gatsby] 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 once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.

It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being.

It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.