The Great Gatsby Chapter 4 Quotes

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.

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. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.

I wouldn’t ask too much of her, I ventured. You can’t repeat the past.

I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before, he said, nodding determinedly. She’ll see.

In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.

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. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything.

There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.

Can’t repeat the past? he cried incredulously. Why of course you can!

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

The Great Gatsby Chapter 4 Quotes part 2

Suddenly she looked at me as if she were startled. Was that—

He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American—that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. This quality was continually breaking through his punctilious manner in the shape of restlessness.

I’m sorry about the clock, he said.

I remembered it at once, and I remembered that I wanted to get something out of it.

Look here, old sport, said Tom, leaning toward me, you’ve got to get somebody for me. You’ve got to try hard.

After a moment the proprietor emerged from the interior of his establishment and confronted me.

Remarkable girl! I can hardly believe she’s real.

It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce.

She was appalled by West Egg.

Well, I met another bad driver, didn’t I?

With an effort I managed to restrain my incredulous laughter. The very phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a turbaned character leaking sawdust at every pore as he pursued a tiger through Bois de Boulogne.

Can’t repeat the past? he cried incredulously. Why of course you can!

I used to know a bootlegger there.

I’m awfully sorry I made you lose your temper, Nick. I have a habit of not thinking before I speak.

What do you want, anyhow?

It’s about this little business of Meyer Wolfshiem.

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

Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

Settling down, Shepard? About your wedding? He hadn’t stopped his car.

What was the matter? I inquired politely.

Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.

Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.

I suppose he’d had that name ready for a long time, even then.

Next day at five o’clock she married Tom Buchanan without so much as a shiver, and started off on a three months’ trip to the South Seas.

She had told him she loved him, and Tom Buchanan saw. He admitted it with reluctance.

The question shot out into my mind as though I’d been poked with a sharp stick.

You’re a decent sort of fellow, and I’m very much afraid you’ll throw your life away for nothing.

Afterward I went into the room and knocked off the end of the soda-water bottle with a teaspoon.

How long are you going to wait?

Read this over for me, old sport… It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was god knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl.

We heard it from three people, so it must be true.

Meyer Wolfshiem—this is the man.

And now she’s going whether she wants to or not. I’m going to get her away.

He won’t touch a thing. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.

We’re all white here, murmured Tom determinedly.