The Great Gatsby Quotes

Question 0

Colossal affair
Daisy across bay
Purposeless splender

Answer 0

‘The one on my right was a colossal affair … Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay … He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from his purposeless splendour.’

Question 1

The Green Light
Intimation
Stretched/Trembling
Distinguished nothing

Answer 1

‘He gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone - he stretched out his arms … I could have sworn he was trembling … I glanced seaward - and distinguished nothing except a single green light.’

Question 2

Clock
Tilt dangerously
Set it back in place

Answer 2

‘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.’

Question 3

Consumed 
Presence
Dreamed it through
Inconceivable pitch
Clock

Answer 3

‘He was consumed with wonder of her presence. He had been full of the idea for so long, dreamed it through to the end … At an inconceivable pitch of intensity … He was running down like an overwound clock.’

Question 4

Tumbled short of dreams
Vitality illusion
Creative passion

Answer 4

‘There must of been moments when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams - not through her own fault, but because the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, he had thrown himself into it with a creative passion.’

Question 5

Wanted nothing less

Obliterating 4 years

Answer 5

‘He wanted nothing less of Daisy than she should go to Tom and say: “I never loved you.” After obliterating four years, with that sentence they go decide upon more practical matters.’

Question 6

Repeat the past

Answer 6

‘“Can’t repeat the past?” He cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”’

Question 7

Loved him

Tom Buchanan saw

Answer 7

‘She had told him she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw.’

Question 8

Pathetic Fallacy

Heat

Answer 8

‘The compressed heat exploded.’

Question 9

Row

House

Answer 9

“What kind of a row are you trying to cause in my house anyhow?”

Question 10

Nobody
Make love
People sneer

Answer 10

“I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife … Nowadays people begin sneering at family life and family institutions.”

Question 11

Doesn’t love you
Mistake
Her heart

Answer 11

“Your wife doesn’t love you. She’s never loved you. She loves me … She only married you because I was poor … It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved anyone except Me!”

Question 12

Crazy
Back door (insult)
Daisy loved me

Answer 12

“You’re crazy! … I’ll be damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to her back door … Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now.”

Question 13

Love Daisy too
Spree
Come back
Better care

Answer 13

“I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree … But I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time … I’m going to take better care of her from now on.”

Question 14

Doesn’t matter anymore
You never loved him
Wiped out

Answer 14

“Daisy, that’s all over now. It doesn’t matter anymore. Just tell him the truth - that you never loved him - and it’s all wiped out forever.”

Question 15

Things between Daisy and me

Forget

Answer 15

“Why - there’s things between Daisy and me you’ll never know, things that neither of us can forget.”

Question 16

Bite into Gatsby

Answer 16

‘The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.’

Question 17

Panic

Take care

Answer 17

‘With a touch of panic, “you’re not going to take care of her anymore!”

Question 18

Nonsense!
Common swindler
Steal the ring

Answer 18

“Nonsense! She’s not leaving me … Certainly not for a common swindler who’d have to steal the ring he put on her finger.”

Question 19

Who are you
Drug stores
Bootlegger

Answer 19

“Who are you anyhow … I found out what your ‘drug stores’ were … I picked him for a bootlegger.”

Question 20

Expression

Killed a man

Answer 20

‘I turned to Gatsby - and was startled at his expression .. As if he had ‘killed a man.’

Question 21

22

Answer 21

‘It passed and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name … But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself and only the dead dream fought on … Trying to reach what was no longer tangible.’

Question 22

Won’t annoy you

Presumptuous little flirtation

Answer 22

“Go on. He won’t annoy you. I think he realises his presumptuous little flirtation is over.”

Question 23

Myrtle

Extinguished

Answer 23

‘Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished.’

Question 24

Driving

Answer 24

“Was Daisy driving?” … “Yes. But of course I’ll say I was.”

Question 25

26

Answer 25

“I’m just going to wait here and see if he tries to bother her … If he tries any brutality she’s going to turn the light out and on again … I want to wait her till Daisy goes to bed.”

Question 26

Talking across table

Conspiring

Answer 26

‘He was talking intently across the table … And anybody would have said they were conspiring together.’

Question 27

Hardly knew

May have loved him

Answer 27

“She hardly knew what she was saying … She may have loved him … And loved me more then.”

Question 28

Rose

Answer 28

‘A grotesque rose.’

Question 29

Standing

Moonlight

Answer 29

‘So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight watching over nothing.’

Question 30

Careless people
Smashed up, retreated to money
Others clean up

Answer 30

‘They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and then retreated back into their money … And let other people clean up the mess.’

Question 31

32

Answer 31

‘His dream must have seemed so close that he could barely grasp it. He did not know it was already behind him.’

Question 32

33

Answer 32

‘Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by
year recedes before us. It eluded us then.’

Question 33

34

Answer 33

‘Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further … So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’

Question 34

Committed
Grail
Married

Answer 34

‘He found that he had committed himself to the following of a Grail … He felt married to her.’