She smiled, a moving childish smile that was like all the lost youth in the world. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

It isn't given for us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. They will not be cured by our most efficacious drugs or slain with our sharpest swords.(From: The Freshest Boy)

You don’t know what a trial it is to be — like me. I've got to keep my face like steel in the street to keep men from winking at me.

The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God — a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that — and he must be about His Father’s Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty.