A sparkling era of decadence, deceit, and despair – F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby painted a fascinating picture of 1920s America from the perspective of those searching in search of the American Dream, set in the fictional town of West Egg in Long Island, USA.
Whether you know it as the book from your English lessons, as one of your favourite classics, or as a novel you’ve not yet read, The Great Gatsby is without a doubt one of the most well-known classics ever published. While The Great Gatsby is not a teen book exactly, it’s read and loved by so many teens that we didn’t feel shy about pulling together these quotes!
The tale of new and old money, lost love, and excess set against the backdrop the Roaring Twenties is familiar to many, and has since been adapted into multiple films, theatre productions, and even an opera. After 90 years of Gatsby, Nick, and Daisy, we look back at some of the most memorable quotes from the great American classic:
Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.”
“And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool”
There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion”
“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can”
“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”
So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.”
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.”
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”