The truth is that the public has done one of those startling and amazing things that they do about once in a hundred years. They've seized an idea. "… - F. Scott Fitzgerald

That however the brains and abilities of men may differ, their stomachs are essentially the same.

December tumbled like a dead leaf from the calendar.

And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

There were girls who would tear you apart with their lips.