. . . Confirmed libertines don't reform until they're tired. . .

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Courage is a sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Deep in his heart, he wondered if he was after all worse than this man or the next. He knew that he could sophisticate himself finally into saying that his own weakness was just the result of circumstances and environment; that often when he raged at himself as an egotist something would whisper ingratiatingly: "No. Genius!

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Each night when she prepared for bed she smeared her face with some new unguent which she hoped illogically would give back the glow and freshness to her vanishing beauty.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

Emory had rather a Puritan conscience. Not that he yielded to it--later in life he almost completely slew it--but at fifteen it made him consider himself a great deal worse than other boys... unscrupulousness... the desire to influence people in almost every way, even for evil... a certain coldness and lack of affection, amounting sometimes to cruelty... a shifting sense of honor... an unholy selfishness... a puzzled, furtive interest in everything concerning sex. There was, also, a curious strain of weakness running crosswise through his make-up... a harsh phrase from the lips of an older boy (older boys usually detested him) was liable to sweep him off his poise into surly sensitiveness, or timid stupidity... he was a slave to his own moods, and he felt that though he was capable of recklessness and audacity, he possessed neither courage, perseverance, nor self-respect. Vanity, tempered with self-suspicion if not self-knowledge, a sense of people as automatons to his will, a desire to "pass" as many boys as possible and get to a vague top of the world... with this background did Emory drift into adolescence.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Emory, sorry for them, was still not sorry for himself - art, politics, religion, whatever his medium should be, he knew he was safe now, free from all hysteria - he could accept what was acceptable, roam, grow, rebel, sleep deep through many nights... There was no God in his heart, he knew; his ideas were still in riot; there was ever the pain of memory; the regret for his lost youth - yet the waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul, responsibility and a love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealized dreams... And he could not tell why the struggle was worthwhile, why he had determined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from the personalities he had passed... He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky." I know myself," he cried, "but that is all.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Emory thought how it was only the past that seemed strange and unbelievable.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Emory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere in the artificial pools, and slow clouds sailed harmoniously above the willow. May came too soon, and suddenly unable to bear walls, he wandered the campus at all hours through starlight and rain.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald