The Great Gatsby Key Moments

'They were out in the open at last and Gatsby was content', 'vivid with excitement'

'Mr Nobody from Nowhere', 'I'll be damned to see how you got within a mile of her'

''Please don't!' she interrupted helplessly, 'Please let's all go home''

''Your wife doesn't love you,' said Gatsby. 'She's never loved you. She loves me', 'both of us loved each other all that time'

'Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself'

'Just tell him the truth- that you never loved him- and it's all wiped out forever'

'I did love him once- but I loved you too', 'The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby'

''She's not leaving me!' Tom's words suddenly leaned down over Gatsby'

'the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice'

'fragilely bound'

'both in white'

'there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows', 'the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor'

'Her face was sad and lovely'

'You ought to see her. She's-'

'I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it'

'the knuckle was black and blue', 'a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a-'

'impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire'

'the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk'

'Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear'

'She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time'

'I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her'

'Mr Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens'

'he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way'

'a single green light'

'he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness'

'insisted upon wherever he was known'

'turned up at popular cafes with her'

'thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light', 'carried her flesh sensuously'

'walking through her husband as if he were a ghost'

'stretched tight over her rather wide hips'

'let four taxicabs drive away before she selected a new one'

'I want to get one of those dogs'

'desolate area of land'

'grotesque gardens; where ashes take the form of houses and chimmeys'

'ash-grey men'

'impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight'

'eyes of Doctor T.J Eckleburg'

'eternal blindness'

'solumn dumping ground'

'dismal scene'

'crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it'

'eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again'

'photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times'

''I just slip it on sometimes when I don't care what I look like''

'Myrtle raied her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. 'These people!''

''Neither of them can stand the person they're married to''

''I almost married a little ****... I knew he was way below me''

''I thought he was a gentleman... he wasn't fit to lick my shoe''

''He borrowed somebody's best suit to get married in... I lay down and cried to beat the band all afternoon''

'broke her nose with his open hand'

'introductions forgotten on the spot'

'I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited' 

''He doesn't want any trouble with anybody''

''Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once''

'muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse'

'He smiled understandingly'/ 'It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it'

'I'd got the strong impression that he was picking his words with care'

'I could see nothing sinister about him'

'no one wrooned backward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched Gatsby's shoulder'

'having fights with men said to be their husbands'

'She was effectually prevented'

'By next autumn she was gay again, gay as ever'

'gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars'

'Tell 'em Daisy's change' her mind'

'She began to cry- she cried and cried'

'half an hour later... the pearls were around her neck'

'I'd never seen a girl so mad about her husband'

'all of them young and rich and wild'

'she came out with an absolutely perfect reputation'

Show of wealth: 'white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-coloured tie', 'entered by the big postern'

Foreboding: 'added hollowly, '...old sport'', 'It's too late!... I can't wait all day', 'pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his pockets', 'in a puddle of water glaring tragically', 'This is a terrible mistake', 'a terrible, terrible mistake', 'I felt that silence had fallen within the house'

Time: 'in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease', 'against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock', 'the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously as the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers', 'Five years next November'

Regret: 'Daisy's face was smeared with tears... He literally glowed... a new well-being radiated', 'Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty', 'Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily'

Gatsby's Dream: 'I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her', 'his bedroom was the simplest room of all', 'There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams... because of the colossal vitality of his illusion' 

End of Chapter 6- 'go back to Louisville and be married from her house- just as if it were five years ago', ''Can't repeat the past?' He cried incredulously. 'Why of course you can!'', 'as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand', 'His life had been confused and disordered since then' 

'formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees', '**** on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder'

'he knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God', 'tuning fork that had been struck upon a star', 'she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete'

Chapter 8- 'first 'nice' girl he had ever known', 'he was in Daisy's house by a colossal accident', 'penniless young man without a past, and at any moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders', 'He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously', 'took her because he had no real right to touch her hand', 'Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor', 'he felt married to her, that was all', 'he had committed himself to the following of a grail' 

'her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust'

'her left breast was swinging loose like a flap'

'The mouth was wide open and ripped a little at the corners'

'lay on a work table'

''She stood it pretty well.' He spoke as if Daisy's reaction was the only thing that mattered'

'Daisy turned away from the woman toward the other car, and then she lost her nerve and turned back'

''It ripped her open-' 'Don't tell me, old sport'' 

'Myrtle Wilson's tragic achievement was forgotten', 'changing crowd lapped up against the front of the garage'

'work bench was stained where the body had been lying'

'I suppose Daisy'll call too'

''They're a rotten crowd,' I shouted across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch of them put together''

'No telephone message arrived... I have a feeling Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared'

'He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is' 

'poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air' 

'a thin red circle in the water' 

'there was not enough of him for his wife'

''God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me, but you can't fool God!''

'Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T.J Eckleburg', ''God sees everything,' repeated Wilson'

'he was on foot all the time'

''Jimmy sent me this picture'... It was a photograph of the house... He had shown it so often I think it was more real to him now than the house itself' 

'He told me I et like a hog once, and I beat him for it' 

'Nobody came'

'thick drizzle', 'all wet to the skin'

'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'

'to buy a pearl necklace'

'that huge incoherent failure of a house', 'On the white steps an obscene word... I erased it'

'the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes- a fresh, green breast of the new world'

'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'

'Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us'

'tomorrow we will run further, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past'