Nick Carraway Quotes

In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ – Nick Carraway

I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life. – Nick Carraway

I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all — Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life. – Nick Carraway

I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me. – Nick Carraway

Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. – Nick Carraway

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. – Nick Carraway

It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it. – Nick Carraway

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. – Nick Carraway

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired. – Nick Carraway

He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. – Nick Carraway

It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. – Nick Carraway

I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden. – Nick Carraway

Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away. – Nick Carraway

After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in and out of Gatsby’s front door. – Nick Carraway

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. – Nick Carraway

One of the few unbroken threads in the book is the devotion which the narrator, Nick Carraway, has to his friend Gatsby. – Nick Carraway

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. – Nick Carraway

Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had. – Nick Carraway

I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life. – Nick Carraway

You can’t repeat the past. – Nick Carraway

Gatsby looked at Daisy in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at. – Nick Carraway

You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together. – Nick Carraway

He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him. – Nick Carraway

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. – Nick Carraway

Everything that happened, good and bad, right or wrong, is captured in Nick’s poignant observation of the events. – Nick Carraway

The cars of the very rich stopped at Gatsby’s door in the station wagon of the very poor. He had a big party in his house every week. Gatsby’s parties were a great success. – Nick Carraway

I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. – Nick Carraway

They’re a rotten crowd… You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together. – Nick Carraway

She was the first ‘nice’ girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people, but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. – Nick Carraway

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. – Nick Carraway

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. – Nick Carraway

“You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.” – Nick Carraway

Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known. – Nick Carraway

And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” – Nick Carraway

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart. – Nick Carraway

His smile was one of those rare smiles that you may come across four or five times in life… It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself. – Nick Carraway

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. – Nick Carraway

I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden. – Nick Carraway

I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others—young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life. – Nick Carraway

So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight. – Nick Carraway

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. – Nick Carraway

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. – Nick Carraway

Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine. – Nick Carraway

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

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. – Nick Carraway