Beware of the artist who's an intellectual also. The artist who doesn't fit.

You can stroke people with words.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

At 18, our convictions are hills from which we look; At 45 they are caves in which we hide.

Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

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. You must, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless, yet be determined to make them otherwise.

A writer's temperament is continually making him do things he can never repair.

An author ought to write for the youth of his generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day. ~ The Crack-Up

Her unselfishness came in pretty small packages well wrapped.

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people's luck.

Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over. ~ The Crack-Up

There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. ~ The Great Gatsby

Writers aren't exactly people...they're a whole lot of people trying to be one person.

Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself, leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes. ~ The Great Gatsby

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