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English Literature > Gatsby quotes > Flashcards

Gatsby quotes Flashcards

1
Q

Quote that shows Nicks narrative, sets up potential relationship with Gatsby, and shows unreliable narration

A

‘I’m inclined to reserve all judgements’
‘reserving judgments is a matter of hope’

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2
Q

‘It is what preyed on Gatsby…

A

… what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams’

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3
Q

‘When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that…

A

…I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever’

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4
Q

Shows Nicks admiration for Gatsby and contrasts his ‘reserving judgements

A

Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.’

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5
Q

Nick talking about West Egg and the difference between West and East egg

A

‘I lived at West Egg, the - well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them’

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6
Q

Nicks description of Gatsby’s house

A

‘A colossal affair by any standard’
‘Factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville’

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7
Q

Nick’s description of houses on East Egg

A

‘The white houses of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water’

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8
Q

Nicks description of Toms connection to football

A

‘I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game’

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9
Q

Nicks description on the Buchanans house

A

‘A cheerful red and white colonial mansion’

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10
Q

Nicks description of Tom Buchanans body

A

‘It was a body capable of enormous leverage- a cruel body’

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11
Q

‘Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it,

A

bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth’

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12
Q

“I always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it.

A

“What’ll we plan?” She turned to me hopelessly: “What do people plan?”

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13
Q

‘I’m glad its a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool - thats

A

the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’

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14
Q

Nicks description of his feeling as he drives away from the Buchanans after finding out about Toms affair

A

‘I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away’

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15
Q

valley of ashes
‘A certain…

A

…desolate area of land’

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16
Q

valley of ashes
‘A fantastic farm…

A

…where ashes grow like wheat…into grotesque gardens where ash-grey men who move dimly and are already crumbling’

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17
Q

He was a blonde, spiritless…

A

…man, anaemic, and faintly handsome […] a damp gleam of hope sprang into his eyes’

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18
Q

myrtle
‘She was in the middle…

A

….thirties[…] she carries her flesh sensuously as some women can’

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19
Q

myrtle
‘There was an immediately perceptible…

A

…vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smoldering’

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20
Q

myrtle
‘Walking through her…

A

…husband as if he were a ghost’

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21
Q

‘Mrs Wilson sat discreetly…

A

…in another car. Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train’

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22
Q

‘The cab stopped at…

A

…one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses’

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23
Q

Mrs Wilson had changed[…]…

A

…cream coloured chiffon[…] with the influence of the dress […] the intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive harteur’

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24
Q

‘Her laughter, her gestures…

A

…her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy creaking pivot.

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25
'simultaneously enchanted and
repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life’
26
‘Making a short deft movement…
…Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand’
27
‘I was standing beside his bed…
…and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear’
28
‘In his blue gardens men and girls…
…came and went like moths along the whisperings and the champagne and the stars’
29
‘And on mondays eight…
…servants, including an extra gardener toiled all day with mops and scrubbing brushes and hammers and garden shears, repairing the ravages of the night before’
30
casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic
meeting between women who never knew each others names’
31
surprisingly formal note […] -
signed Jay Gatsby, in a majestic hand.’
32
‘absolutely real…
…-have pages and everything.[…] This fella’s a regular Belasco’
33
‘by midnight…
…the hilarity had increased. A celebrated tenor sung in Italian, and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz, and between the numbers people were doing ‘stunts’ all over the garden'
34
‘we talked for a moment about some…
…wet, grey little villages in France.'
35
gatsby ‘It was one of those rare…
…smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it’
36
'during the course of her song she had decided, ineptly, that everything was sad, very
sad-she was not only singing, she was weeping too’
37
‘I began to like New York…
…the racy, adventurous feel of it at night’
38
‘at the enchanted metropolitan….
…twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes’
39
jordan ‘I am one of the few honest…
…people that I have ever known’
40
‘He’s a bootlegger’ […] ‘One time he…
…killed a man who found out that he was nephew to von Hidenburg and second cousin to the devil. Reach me a rose, honey, and pour me a drop into that there crystal glass’
41
‘He was never quite still; there was always…
…a tapping foot somewhere or the impatient opening and closing of a hand’
42
gatsby's car ‘It was a rich cream colour, bright with…
…nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns’
43
‘he hurried the phrase…
…educated at Oxford,’ or swallowed it or choked on it as though it had bothered him before’
44
gatsby's stories ‘then it was all true. I saw…
…the skins of tigers flaming in his palace on the Grand Canal; I saw him opening a chest of rubies to ease, with their crimson-lighted depths, the gnawing of his broken heart’
45
‘I was able to do a commissioners a favour…
…once, and he sends me a Christmas card every year’
46
‘As we crossed Blackwell’s Island…
…a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish Negroes, two bucks and a girl’
47
‘Finest specimens of human molars’…
‘Meyer Wolfshiem? No he’s a gambler.’Gatsby hesitated, then added cooly: ‘He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.’
48
‘The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking…
…in a way that very young girl wants to be looked at sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me i have remembered to incident ever since.’
49
‘The day before the wedding he gave her…
…a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars’
50
‘Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night…
…and ripped the front wheel off his car. The girl who was with his got into the papers too because her arm was broken-she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara hotel.'
51
‘Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodies face floated…
…along the dark cornices and blinding signs so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms’
52
‘the exhilarating ripple of her voice was
a wild tonic in the rain’
53
‘the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon
he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and set it back in place.’
54
'But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He
literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.’
55
‘I’m glad Jay.’ Her throat, full of
aching, grieving, beauty told only of her unexpected joy.’
56
‘He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of
response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes too, he started around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs.’
57
‘They’re such beautiful
shirts’, she sobbed.’
58
' His count of
enchanted objects had diminished by one.’
59
‘There must have been moments that afternoon when Daisy tumbled
short of his dreams-not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion’
60
‘I think that the voice held him most, with its
fluctuating, feverish warmth because it couldn’t be over-dreamed - that voice was a deathless song’
61
'Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain,
leaving them there together.’
62
‘his parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people-his
imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all’
63
‘But his heart was in a constant turbulent riot. The
most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night.’
64
‘a promise that the rock
of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.’
65
‘To the young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up
at the railed deck, the yacht represented all of the beauty and and glamour in the world.’
66
‘i haven’t got a horse’ said Gatsby. ‘I used to ride
in the army but I’ve never bought a horse. I’ll follow you in my car.’
67
‘He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should
go to Tom and say ‘I never loved you’ […] after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house - just as it were five years ago.
68
‘He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolated path of fruit rinds and discarded favours
[…]’Can’t repeat the past? he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!
69
‘Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she
blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.’
70
‘his career as
Trimalchio was over’
71
'the whole caravansary had fallen like
a card house at the disapproval in her eyes’
72
‘the next day was broiling, almost the last,
certainly the warmest, of the summer’
73
‘afterward he kept looking at the child with surprise.
I don’t think think he had ever really believed in its existence before’
74
‘you resemble the advertisement of the man’ she went on innocently
‘you know the advertisement of the man’
75
'her voice is full of money’ he said suddenly […] That was it. I’d never understood before.
It was full of money- that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals song of it…’
76
‘I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let
Mr Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife’
77
‘she only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me.
It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone except me!’
78
‘And whats more, I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off in a spree and make fun of myself,
but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time.’
79
‘Oh you want too much!’ she cried to Gatsby
I love you now-isn’t that enough? I can’t help whats past.’ She began to sob helplessly. ‘I id love him once- but I loved you too’
80
‘Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to
steal the ring he put on her finger’
81
Thirty- the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know,
a thinning brief case of enthusiasm, thinning hair’
82
‘I’ve got my wife locked up in there,’ explained Wilson calmly.
‘She’s going to stay there till the day after tomorrow and then we’re going away’
83
‘when the had torn open her shirtwaist still damp with persperation, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap and
there was no need to listen for her heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped at the corners as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.’
84
‘but of course
I’ll say I was’
85
‘There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about
the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.’
86
‘I want to wait here till Daisy goes to bed. Good night old sport.’ […] He out his hands in his coat pockets and turned back eagerly to the scrutiny of the house, as though my presence
marred the sacredness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight - watching over nothing.’
87
"Why, my God, they used to
go there by the hundreds"
88
"I gathered that he wanted to recover something. Some
idea of himself that had gone into loving Daisy."
89
"He broke off and began to walk down a desolate path of
fruit rinds and discarded favours and crushed flowers"
90
description of Daisy running over Myrtle
"killed instantly" " it ripped her open"
91
what does Wolfsheim say about Gatsby's death + funeral
"I can't get mixed up in it"
92
"the East was haunted for me like
that, distorted beyond my eyes' power of correction"
93
Nicks description of his feelings for Jordan at the end of the novel
"half in love with her"
94
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed
up things and and creatures then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness [...] and let other people clean up the mess they had made"
95
"So we beat on, boats
against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past"
96
"he stretched out his arms toward
the dark water" "I could have sworn he was trembling"
97

English Literature (17 decks)

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