sometimes i wish i'd been an englishman; american life is so damned dumb and stupid and healthy - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Open the whisky, Tom,' she ordered, 'and I'll make you a mint julep. Then you won't seem so stupid to yourself... Look at the mint!

Her beauty climbed the rolling slope, it came into the room, rustling ghost-like through the curtains...

And that taught me you can't have anything, you can't have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It's like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it - but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you've got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone.