F Scott Fitzgerald Inspirational Quotes

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

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.

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

She was beautiful, but not like those girls in magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile, even if she was sad. No, she wasn't beautiful for something as temporary as her looks. She was beautiful, deep down to her soul. She is beautiful.

For what it's worth: it's never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you're proud of, and if you find you're not, I hope you have the strength to start over again.

But I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it.

It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

I love her and that's the beginning and end of everything.

A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

I'll drink your champagne. I'll drink every drop of it, I don't care if it kills me.

There's no substitute for will. Sometimes you have to fake will when you don't feel it at all.

Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane. Respect rather than fear. There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions, who will do anything. Of course we make him pay afterward for his moment of superiority, his moment of impressiveness.

My courage is faith--faith in the eternal resilience of me--that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high and my eyes wide--not necessarily any silly smiling. Oh, I've been through hell without a whine quite often--and the female hell is deadlier than the male.

It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.

I found something! Courage--just that; courage as a rule of life and something to cling to always.

Work like hell! I had 122 rejection slips before I sold a story.

He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.

I could never be a Communist. I could never be regimented. I could never be told what to write.

There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions, who will do anything. Of course we make him pay afterward for his moment of superiority, his moment of impressiveness.

This general eclipse of ambition and determination and fortitude, all of the very qualities on which I have prided myself, is ridiculous, and, I must admit, somewhat obscene.

My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness.

My life... my life has got to be like this. It's got to keep going up.

Is your generation so soft that they talk of going to pieces if life doesn't always present itself in terms of beautiful, easy decisions?

Ne gariptir, acıdan kaçınmaya çalışırken, bazen bizi o noktaya getiren ayak izlerinin bir bir üzerinden geçmek gerekebilir.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

Communism as I see it has no place in the United States, and the American people will not stand for its teachings.

The clean book bill will be one of the most immoral measures ever adopted. It will throw American art back into the junk heap.

You probably think you know...The failure and the success both believe in their hearts that they have accurately balanced points of view, the success because he's succeeded, and the failure because he's failed. The successful man tells his son to profit by his father's good fortune, and the failure tells his son to profit by his father's mistakes.

Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you - like music to the musician or Marxism to the communist - or else it is nothing, an empty, formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.

A good style simply doesn't form unless you absorb half a dozen top flight authors every year. Or rather it forms but, instead of being a subconscious amalgam of all that you have admired, it is simply a reflection of the last writer you have read, a watered-down journaleese.

Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane. Respect rather than fear. There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions, who will do anything. Of course we make him pay afterward for his moment of superiority,

They're a rotten crowd. You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Yes—well they were having words and she tossed some sand in his face. So naturally he sat on top of her and rubbed her face in the sand. We were—electrified.

I have lived so long within the circle of this book [Tender Is The Night] and with these characters that often it seems to me that the real world does not exist but that only these characters exist, and, however pretentious that remark sounds....it is an absolute fact---so much so that their glees and woes are just exactly as important to me as what happens in life.

Why shouldn’t I? I demand silently. Why shouldn’t I become a famous writer? Like Norman Mailer. Or Philip Roth. And F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemmingway and all those other men. Why can’t I be like them? I mean, what is the point of becoming a writer if no one reads what you’ve written? Damn Viktor Greene and The New School. Why do I have to keep proving myself all of the time? Why can’t I be like L’il, with everyone praising and encouraging me? Or Rainbow, with her sense of entitlement. I bet Viktor Greene never asked Rainbow why she wanted to be a writer. Or what if-I wince-Viktor Greene is right? I’m not a writer after all.

We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.

Whenever any of these new writers come up who are brilliant, I always realize that you have more talent and more skill than any of them;---but circumstances have prevented you from realizing upon the fact for a long time. [About F. Scott Fitzgerald]

She narrowed her eyes and shivered. Lucille shivered. We all turned and looked around for Gatsby. It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world.

Personality is a physical matter almost entirely; it lowers the people it acts on - I've seen it vanish in a long sickness. But while a personality is active, it overrides 'the next thing.' Now a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought of apart from what he's done. He's a bar on which a thousand things have been hung — glittering things sometimes, as ours are; but he uses those things with a cold mentality back of them.

Não há fogo nem frescura, por muito grandes que sejam, capazes de competir com os fantasmas que, no seu íntimo, um homem consegue armazenar.

Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.

A writer must find his own grain, way, bent. ...He aspires to create new and original works. His way is alone. If he succumbs to ideologies, he turns into a mouthpiece. He must hang on to his identity for dear life. In the end he must rely on his own judgment. It’s the only way to survive as a writer and an artist.

In my opinion, Fiction is a figment of our imagination & it causes us to dream but Reality taints dreams, and the F.scott Fitzgerald has clearly depicted this in The Great Gatsby.

Art invariably grows out of a period when, in general, the artist admires his own nation and wants to win its approval.

Artistic temperament is like a king with vigor and unlimited opportunity. You shake the structure to pieces by playing with it.

A book is a gift you can open again and again." – Garrison Kellor "Some books leave us free and some books make us free." – Ralph Waldo Emerson "Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers." – Charles W. Eliot "A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors." – Charles Baudelaire "There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things." – Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot "Books are mirrors: You only see in them what you already have inside you." – Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind "Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head." – Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies... The man who never reads lives only one." – George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons "Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work." – Khaled Hosseini "Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while." – Malorie Blackman "That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong." – F. Scott Fitzgerald "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." – Frederick Douglass "Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere." – Jean Rhys "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." – Joan Didion, The White Album

Espero que vivas una vida de la que estés orgulloso. Si descubres que no es así, espero que tengas la fuerza para empezar de nuevo".

_If it wasn´t for the mist we could see your home across the bay_ said Gatsby_ your always have a green light that burns all night under your dock.

Now, Max, I have told you many times that you are my publisher, and permanently, as far as one can fling about the word in this too mutable world....The idea of leaving you has never for one single moment entered my head.

So when I’m listening to someone tell their story, I’m also asking myself, What characters does this person have in his head? Is this a confident voice or a tired voice, a regretful voice or an anticipating voice? For some reason, I like novels where the narrator has an elegiac voice. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, and Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, the narrators have a world-weary tone. It’s like they’re looking back on glorious past events when dreams were fresh and the world seemed new and the disappointments of life had not yet settled in. That voice sounds to me like writing done in the minor key, and I find it tremendously moving. But I guess I wouldn’t like to be around people with that voice in real life. In real life I’d prefer to be around my friend Kate Bowler’s voice. As I mentioned, Kate got cancer a few years ago, when she was a young mother, and her voice is filled with vulnerability and invites vulnerability, but mostly it says: Life can suck, but we’re going to be funny about it. She has a voice that pulls you into friendship and inspires humor; in her voice, laughter is never very far away.